


A Triangle of Many Sides

by ObabScribbler



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Multi, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Romance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 39
Words: 63,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23838910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObabScribbler/pseuds/ObabScribbler
Summary: Family relationships in FFVII are always strained. If your dad doesn't want to turn you into a living weapon, your mom is an alien, or everyone died in tragic circumstances for which you blame yourself.The hidden stories of FFVII from pre-canon to post-canon, that attempts to make some of the more sprawling aspects of the FFVII universe make sense (e.g. Where the hell did Cissnei go after Crisis Core? Cloud's Dad – MIA, dead or an alien from the Planet Zog? How did Zack and Angeal first meet? AWOL Turks of Before Crisis, where are you? And Kunsel. Just ... Kunsel as a whole. Who is he, where did he go, how the hell did he know so much and why didn't he become a super-villain because of it? Kunsel vexes me greatly).Give it a chance to make sense and it will.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Tseng, Cissnei & Zack Fair, Cissnei/Zack Fair, Sephiroth & Cloud Strife, Zack Fair & Angeal Hewley, Zack Fair & Sephiroth, Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough
Comments: 15
Kudos: 50





	1. Prologue: Leader

**Author's Note:**

> This is something of a special project, as it started life as a three-chapter fic called 'Triangle', written several years ago, around the time I first got into FFVII and was fascinated by the connections between Zack, Aerith and Cloud. That original fic can still be found on my old profile on Fanfiction.net but the idea itself has since grown into substantially more. Though it still focuses a lot on Cloud, Zack and Aerith, the scope has widened to include most, if not all, of the cast, including some secondary characters such as the Turks. Basically, this is my BUT HOW DID THAT EVEN WOOOOORK? fic that attempts to make some of the more sprawling aspects of the FFVII universe make sense. 
> 
> All I can do at this juncture is repeat myself: give it a chance to make sense and it will and thank you for reading.

_2000 B.G._

* * *

Elfé leaned heavily on her staff, trying to ignore the ache in her bones. It felt like the marrow had been sucked right out of them, pulled from under her fingernails and through her pores. Everything hurt, from her toenails to her scalp. Even her skin felt like it had been peeled off and reattached wrong. Two things kept her on her feet, pretending she was fine: her people looking to her for guidance and the fact that, if she could feel her aches and pains, she was still alive. Others hadn't been so lucky. If she showed weakness now it would be spitting on their sacrifice.

The battle had been hard. In all their long history there had never been another like it. Not even the civil war, when Cetra fought Cetra about whether to settle or keep to life as nomads. Cetra were peaceful. They always preferred solving a problem without violence.

The civil war had been millennia ago. Most of the Old Magic from that time had now been lost. Elfé and her people had thinner blood than their ancestors, the power in them fragile in comparison. They weren't as weak as their genetic cousins, the humans, but that wasn't really a comfort. Humans were blind and deaf to anything beyond their five physical senses; insensate to the natural rhythms of the Planet without signs from nature to guide them. Most were greedy to the point of cruelty and couldn't see the patterns of life around them if they jumped up and bit them.

If the Cetra had been stronger, they wouldn't have lost so many of their number to JENOVA's virus. Fewer of Elfé's friends would have morphed into monsters and gone rampaging through the rest. The leaders from ancient times would have known what to do. They wouldn't have been driven to desperation and heresy like Elfé.

Cetra magic wasn't meant to be used for fighting. It went against everything they held dear. Yet she had forced her people to do it anyway.

Had it been worth it? JENOVA was gone. That was good. Yet so many of her people had died to make that happen. Victory was a human value. Nature didn't care about victory; it cared about keeping the balance of life, death, magic and everything in between. What was victory worth when you couldn't share it with your friends and family? Already the survivors were talking, wondering if there hadn't been another way.

Guilt gnawed on Elfé like hungry wolves around sickly prey. She was so _tired_. All the same, she couldn't afford to weaken. She was leader. Leaders had to be strong so the rest could be weak. Leaders had to shoulder everybody's grief except their own. The leader had to be practical when all she really wanted was to mourn the friends whose lives she had spent like blowing puffs of smoke in a rainstorm. Someone had to take command during the battle and of the plan beforehand. She'd done those two. Now to take care of the third: the aftermath. This should have been the easy part. JENOVA was gone. The virus was gone. They were alive.

It wasn't easy at all. A survivor came towards her. Elfé straightened. Her bones shrieked and her head spun, but she met his eyes until he looked away.

"Elfé, we need to find shelter." His voice was a croak from chanting shielding spells for hours while JENOVA fought to break their lines. Elfé recognised him as part of the third wave. JENOVA nearly got to that line. None of the first wave had made it, and at least half of the second were gone.

"How are the wounded?" she asked.

"They'll live. For now."

More deaths to add to her conscience. Bitterness spiked in Elfé. She hoped bad things happened to the humans whose knee-jerk fear of the virus had made them kill _all_ the Cetra they could find, not just the infected. If the scattered Cetra tribes' numbers had been stronger when they banded together to go after JENOVA, maybe their losses wouldn't be so devastating now. Maybe the added strength would have compensated for their weakened magic and the rest wouldn't have had to work so hard to contain and then seal the demon. Even as Elfé faced off against JENOVA in the final sealing, she had been aware of collapsing figures around her. From the corner of her eyes she had seen their fleeing souls, and afterwards seen the crumpled corpses around the Protective Circle. Perhaps if there had been more of them, someone else would have been leader. She wouldn't have had to grasp the nettle nobody else wanted to touch. She wouldn't have gathered what was left of their people, disparate tribes still mourning their dead, and bullied them into what they'd all privately thought would be suicide.

She'd felt the minds of the dying. She would never forget that. It scraped along under her skin; a prickly knowledge she would never shake off. She would never feel clean again after what she had done to them.

She was the leader, so of course she'd volunteered to be the hub for the magic their Protective Circle gathered right out of the Planet's core. It had been a dangerous, last-ditch attempt to defeat JENOVA. Lifestream wasn't meant to be pulled out into the open that way, let alone used so unnaturally. Cetra magic usually just skimmed the surface so the balance wasn't disturbed. As a rebellious teenager, Elfé had delved too deep into that raw power and nearly fried her mind. This time they'd gone even deeper, yanking out bits of energy like plaiting a lasso from uprooted grass and using it to rope a bucking horse.

Elfé just hoped Gaia could forgive them. Something of a vain hope, since she couldn't even forgive herself. As the hub, she had channelled most of the energy the Cetra brought up and had directed it at JENOVA. Elfé should have died, or at least her brain should've after so much trauma. Instead, it had been sharpened to a lethal point as the magic scoured her from the inside out. Everyone involved had passed through her mind like grain pouring from one bag into another, beautiful and fresh … and then gone.

Until the day she did finally die, Elfé knew she would have no peace. She had led them all to that. People. Individuals. She wasn't a warmonger who saw things in terms of numbers and acceptable losses. Cetra weren't _meant_ to fight. She had forced the issue, and them. She hadn't seen any other way. It had been her idea, and her drive that made it reality.

Was there even a place in the Promised Land for someone like her? Humans were the warlike ones. Their attachment to territory made them aggressive. The Cetra were supposed to be more enlightened, but when it came down to it, Elfé had acted like a human. She had made the tough choices nobody else wanted to make. Now the disaster had been averted, she was left to wonder whether those choices had really been hers to make at all.

"Elfé?"

She blinked back to the present. "Uh, send scouts. Find the least tired and send them out on a rota. Look at the mountain range, not the wasteland. We'll need somewhere we can defend in a pinch."

As if any of them were actually capable of fighting anymore. A gaggle of humans armed with feathers could have decimated the Cetra right now, much less ones with clubs or blades.

The man nodded and moved away. Elfé waited until he was gone before sighing and letting her fingers grip her staff so tight her knuckles blanched. A wave of pain washed over and through her. Her teeth clenched. She waited for it to pass.

She moved away from the others, to the crest of the hill where the least injured had been working since sun-up. It was nearly sundown now. She crested the rise and half-skidded a few feet down the mud on the other side before she could stop herself. Her knees nearly buckled, and not from exhaustion.

"Gaia forgive me ..." she gasped.

Her eyes stung. She was the leader – the first to unite so many tribes in hundreds of years – and leaders had to be strong.

But she'd never asked to be leader. It was just necessity when humans left only five of her tribe alive and JENOVA infected four of them. She had lost her husband to that creature. She should have felt vindicated. She had avenged him. Instead, all she felt was tired and miserable, as if the Cetra had been defeated.

"I only did what I thought was right." Her eyes filled with tears as she surveyed rows upon rows of freshly turned dirt. Like all living things, Cetra returned to the Planet when they died. Life grew from death just like death followed life. "I only did what seemed right."

A mother cried beside a tiny grave. A man tenderly stroked a pile of mud that covered someone he loved. All around her, people grieved. Elfé's new senses caught their feelings like magical spiderwebs.

"I was wrong," she whispered. "We're too few. How can we survive now? I made a mistake. We should have done like the humans and hidden. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry …"

Was this the end of the Cetra?

The ground beneath Elfé seemed to pulse. She closed her eyes, green lights flickering behind her lids. Slowly her shoulders eased. The lines around her mouth relaxed. Voices no ear could hear gave her a message from the souls rejoining the Lifestream. A sense of peace suffused her. She suddenly remembered her father pulling her back when her foolishness nearly killed her, and how he had stroked her hair until she stopped trembling. When she thought of her stupidity back then, she never remembered that part.

When she reopened her eyes they were the same shade of green they had always been. To an observer, she had just blinked a bit longer than usual. Yet some of the grief-inspired dullness had been erased, making them seem brighter.

Her belly prickled.

"I see," she murmured. "Not an end. Just another beginning."

 _Something like that_ , replied a voice as old as time itself. _Now stop apologising and get on with living the life you fought for. What was the point of fighting for it if you're just going to waste it moping?_

Months later, as she held the baby that had outlived her husband before it was even born, Elfé thought back to that moment at the edge of the battlefield. She looked down at the crown of her baby's head, remembering all the lives that had been spent to make a world where babies could be born safely, away from the shadow of JENOVA. It had been worth it after all. She had made the right decision to end the threat before it cost them everything.

She didn't know the threat wasn't gone at all, or that JENOVA and the conflict with her really had cost the Cetra everything after all.


	2. Hojo: Black Sheep

They called him 'freak' behind his back. It wasn't half as bad as what they called him to his face. They thought his glasses meant he couldn't hear, or maybe they just didn't care. He was a scrawny boy; a weedy specimen whose limbs got gangly but never filled out the way his father promised they would. When he ran it was like a puppet with tangled strings. When he jogged he thought his teeth might rattle right out of his skull. His father insisted he lift weights when he was a teenager. He made his arms sore with dumbbells and nearly choked to death when the barbell caught him across his throat. None of ti helped. He was destined to fulfill the part of 'nerd' in the school cast list.

What could he do? Bullies made a beeline for him no matter what he did. He couldn't fight back. It was pathetic when he tried. He could throw words – nobody thought up witty ripostes the way he could – but the fastest insult in the world was just an invitation for violence. What was the point when his classmates' wittiest comeback was a fist to the face?

He withdrew into himself. By the time puberty really got going he could go whole days without saying a word to anyone. His mother worried about him, but she was an equally weedy woman – in body and in mind. If she ever had an original thought her head would probably explode. His father was from the 'cruel to be kind' school of parenting. He thought ice-water baths and regular beatings were good for a boy.

"Keeps you on your toes," he barked as he poured in another bucket. He didn't get the irony. "Now stay on your tush and tough it out, m'boy. Real men can take harsh conditions. Why, when I was in the service, we thought nothing of this sort of thing. Nothing at all! We went swimming in ice floes, and then went for a six mile run – in the nude!"

"Y-Yes, F-Father." _Which is why you have so many health problems now, you idiot._

"Speak up, boy! Don't sound like such a ninny all your life!"

"Y-Yes, s-sir."

"What?"

"YES, SIR!"

His father was a bluff old cove who liked nothing more than to knock back drinks and shout the world going to wrack and ruin. A fine figure in his youth, he had gone to seed as he got older. While he could probably still punch any opponent into next week, he now lived through the younger generation and was ashamed of his son for not being a warrior worthy of inheriting his name.

"Boys should be boys," he frequently yelled at his wife. "Not blithering little girls in shorts! You mollycoddle the lad too damn much!"

Sometimes his mother tried to defend him to his father. It rarely worked. She was so _wishy-washy_. "Yes darling, of course; but if he's truly unhappy at that school, maybe we should think about perhaps, you know, maybe pulling him out …"

"Unhappy? _Unhappy_? Of course he's unhappy. That's the bloody _point_! Unhappiness builds character; toughens the soul, the nerve, the spirit and everything else. Unhappiness makes you want to _get_ happy, which makes you want to get stronger. It should make him want to fight, damn it!Otherwise he'll grow up to be one of those useless, touchy-feely, thin-skinned little nobodies. I want him to be a _man,_ you stupid woman, not some arty farty parody of one. No son of mine is going to grow up a failure."

"I'm not a failure," he muttered in the privacy of his room, nursing black eye after cut after laceration; remembering thump after punch after kick. "I'm not a failure. I'm _not_." It became his mantra. The worse the treatment he received from his bullies and his father, the more he repeated it. "I'm not a failure. I'm not a _failure_. I'm _not_ a failure. _I'm_ not a failure."

He grew to loathe the weak-willed, strong-bodied bullies. His father's image of what he should be became everything he struggled to avoid. If his father wanted him to be strong in body but weak in mind, he decided to do exactly the opposite. He wasn't a failure, and he would prove it – just not in the way the old idiot expected.

Like many tough men, his father feared intelligent people. They made him feel inferior, so he belittled them to cover his feelings. What better way to retaliate than to become the thing his father hated most. He could use it to free himself of the man's controlling fist.

So he worked harder than anybody could have predicted, studied harder than anybody in the history of his school. The place was geared towards people who built their muscles more than their brains. His teachers, jaded after years of heavy-duty boys they were told to give passing grades no matter what, were thrilled to teach someone who actually wanted to learn. Having a scholar in their ranks confused the other boys, plus several members of senior management. He shot through their defenses before they realised what was happening and stood out like a solar flare in a clear night sky.

"I'm not a failure. I'm not a _failure_. I'm _not_ a failure. _I'm_ not a failure."

The governors and luminaries at the graduation ceremony couldn't help but notice him, especially since their final exam scores appeared on the digital board above them when their names were called.

"Hojo!" proclaimed the valedictorian. "One hundred percent pass rate, with distinction in physics, chemistry, maths, further maths, maths mechanics, statistics, biology, human biology, biological sciences …"

The litany went on for nearly half a minute. The audience's collective jaw dropped. They were all wondering what the hell a boy like him was doing at this school. Shouldn't he have run off to one of the brain-box academies years ago? His kind were usually rooted out long before they made it to graduation.

"But he's going to be a military man," his father said at the post-graduation party. He was holding court in his usual bullish way. He actually attempted to put an arm around his son's shoulders. "Our family have all been military men. It's tradition."

Hojo slipped free of him. "I can assure you, sir, I am not going to join the military," he said calmly. He always called his father sir, but managed to make it sound like an insult. "Tradition is for idiots who can't think outside the box. I am going to be a scientist. I am going to research how to identify weakness in humans -" He looked directly at his father, allowing the coldness of a thousand ice-water baths to seep into his stare. It had never worked before, but here, like this, in public, it made his father flinch. "- and I am going to erase them."

"Preposterous! Playing god with a scalpel? I won't have any son of mine –"

"Then I won't be a son of yours."

"Preposterous! _Preposterous_! I won't have it. I simply won't have it."

In the end he didn't get a say. A well-placed drop of the right drug in his brandy and it looked exactly like cardiac arrest. The extra inches around his father's belly removed any suspicion. Too many big dinners and after-dinner drinks, people said. He was a heart attack waiting to happen – sad but not unexpected. His mother died 'from grief' a few days later. Devoted herself to her husband, those same people said. Small wonder that she couldn't live without him.

They had no idea. They never had.

 _Idiots_ , Hojo thought, not savagely, but almost … disappointed.

Had part of him been hoping for more? He truly was surrounded by imbeciles. Humanity was diseased. So predictable. It needed to be reset. It needed to be streamlined, the bad elements cut away, like he had cut away inessential parts of his personality to get to this point. Sympathy and regret were useless. He had experience in these matters; he was a living success story. He had plans.

Oh yes. Such plans.

_I'm not a failure. I'm_ _**not** _ _a failure. I'm not a_ _**failure** _ _._ _**I'm** _ _not a failure._

"I'm not the failure," he said, changing the wording at last. "I'm here to erase the failures."

He set out to do just that; an endless pursuit of perfection that always seemed to elude his grasp. It didn't matter whether he trampled others along the way. They weren't important – or if they were, they still weren't as important as him. they couldn't measure up to him or his genius, so what did he care about them? His plans were paramount. _He_ was paramount.

Years after his graduation, when he was so far along his path to greatness he could barely see the starting point anymore, he remembered his father's words at that party. He was standing in the lab, making notes on a sheet, when the memory suddenly surged into his mind as clearly as if it had happened only a few seconds ago.

" _Preposterous! Playing god with a scalpel?"_

Playing god? He looked up at tubes filled with men and other bipedal things. Hardly. Only fools played. Serious men just got on with it.


	3. Cid: Dreamer

"Hey, Cid, you coming to the playground or what?"

"No point in asking him, dude. All he ever does it sit on the seesaw like a noob."

"Totally. He just, like, stares at the clouds all day."

"Sounds freaky."

"Is he slow or something?"

"As if. He _is_ cracked in the head, though. Total freakazoid."

"Just don't let him hear you say that, or he'll hit you so hard your frigging ancestors won't be able to plant baby seeds!"

Cid scowled to himself. While his rep was a useful tool for keeping people off his back, he hated it when people talked like he wasn't there. Maybe those boys were just too stupid to realise sound carried across distances, and a classroom wasn't exactly a desert that sucked voices away on the wind. He stared studiously out the window, arms folded. He affected teenage boredom so convincingly it was almost a shock to pull back and remind himself he _wasn't_ angsting about regular teenage problems. He didn't have time to angst about zits, girls, or hair in funny places. There was too much other stuff to think about – much more _interesting_ stuff!

When he looked up, he wasn't staring at the clouds. At least, not in the way those idiots thought. While they were busy trying to look up girls' skirts and see who could spit furthest off the school balconies, he was busy figuring out trajectories and weight ratios for getting a hunk of hollow metal into the sky and making it stay there.

The dynamics of flying fascinated him. He could understand birds after he researched bone density and feather design. Nature had outdone itself when it created birds – except maybe chocobos, but those nasty flightless fuckers were a whole other story. Manmade flight, however, was where his imagination really took wing.

Planes and airships were ridiculous. How could anything so heavy act like it weighed nothing at all? His classmates didn't think about it, of course. They were a bunch of fucktards. They didn't care, and thought him weird for wanting to know how it all worked. There was plenty of time for 'all that school junk' later on, they said whenever they needed an extra soccer player and Cid didn't want to play.

Nobody called him a wuss, in case he pounded them. They practised who could throw the best punch, everyone knew who was actually best, so they competed for second place without saying the words. Still, they all thought it loud and clear. Cid Highwind was a weirdo, one best left alone if you didn't want him to macramé your face for looking at him wrong.

He wasn't even a teacher's pet to balance out his weird fascination with learning. He only liked learning about things that lent themselves to the science of flying. His art and literature teachers despaired. The music teacher only gave him the triangle to play in school recitals. He annoyed the others, sometimes just by being in the room. They hated how he stared distractedly out of the window, knowing that if they reprimanded him for not paying attention he would ask them some genuinely intelligent question they couldn't answer. He wasn't trying to be cheeky, he genuinely wanted to know, but that didn't make it any less humiliating when the rest of the students realised he had flummoxed the teacher and broke into excited muttering that lasted the rest of the day.

Cid Highwind developed a problem with authority figures from a young age – mainly because, right from the start, they all had a problem with him. He ended up reflecting their aggravation right back at them, coming across as surly and uncommunicative when all he really wanted was someone to _talk to_ about the really interesting stuff.

He didn't bother seeking out others to talk, but there came a time when his head was so bursting with ideas, and the library no longer provided enough answers to his questions. He just _had_ to go to a real person, to quiz them about possibilities beyond just regular flight.

When he first mentioned the moon stuff, they _really_ looked at him like he was a crackpot.

"Don't be foolish, boy," said his history teacher. "Nobody has ever flown to the moon. It's impossible."

"So is taking a lump of steel into the air with just a few itsy-bitsy propellers and a furnace engine," he muttered in reply. " _Sir_."

His teachers all wrote 'argumentative' and 'confrontational' on his report after that. Even the science and engineering teachers had all had enough of him.

It was a good thing his parents didn't give a damn what their weirdo son got up to. As long as he didn't upset the balance of their quiet, orderly lives, he could think the moon was made of cheese, for all they cared. They ignored letters from school in case they had to actually _do_ something with – or about – their only son. They most they said to him was an order to put the kettle on, and _please_ make the tea right this time.

As a teenager, Cid was embarrassed to think how he used to practise tea-making in an effort to please them. Before he realised nothing he did ever would, he used to get up in the night and run through the perfect pot of tea in their little kitchenette, so he could greet them with a loaded tea-tray in the morning. When he was really little, he had to stand on a stool to get the milk from the fridge and shouldn't, technically, have been using the stove to heat water, but everyone knew perfect tea couldn't be made with water from an electric kettle, and toast had to be stuck on a poker in an open flame, not jammed in a toaster where it would blacken or stay raw bread. He would carry the breakfast tray to his parents' room, somehow shoulder open the door and wait for their sleepy approval – which never came. It was always too cold, too steeped, too weak, too milky, or one of the other million things that meant he had to try again tomorrow. When he hit fifteen he thought 'screw it, they can make their own goddamn tea', and cringed at the memory of every failed pot.

He taught himself not to care. What did any of that matter when there was flight to think about? He just sat on the seesaw and dreamed his impossible dreams – and how to someday make them possible.


	4. Dala: Pretty Girl

Dala listened to her father rant and calculated how long it would take him to realise she'd slipped out the back door. She could hear him from all the way down the street. Everybody could. She kept her head down and her eyes lowered so she couldn't see their nosy neighbours' knowing looks. It wasn't bad enough growing up in Nibelheim, a backwater where nothing ever happened; no, she had to live with a man with giant opinions and a volume to match.

She had to admit she didn't like Shinra either, but unlike her father she didn't yell about it all the time. Nobody much liked the company. Shinra were regarded as money-grabbing industrialists who didn't care for local customs or traditions. Still, everyone had to admit the mako reactor had created some much-needed jobs. A lot of the real manly-men – men who chewed iron nails instead of tobacco and scratched themselves in public – thought working for Shinra was a cop-out from 'real work'. Those were the men whose families had used dragon hunts to provide for the town since the first settlers, and who saw no reason to change anything now. One dragon pelt could fetch enough Gil to fix the water tower, or repair the road out of town.

Dala's father had lost his leg to Crimson Dragon when she was just a little girl. She had been caring for him ever since. Eighteen years after gaining a daughter and losing a wife, his temper and personality had long-since moved past 'grating'. You would think she would be inured to it, and him, after all that time, but it didn't work that way. She wasn't allowed to be sulky as a teenager. Hiding in her room would have made him climb the stairs, and then she would have caught the back of his hand for making him climb them. Rebelliousness was squashed quickly and efficiently – or so he thought. Nowadays, Dala found herself leaving the house when he got too bad, in case she said something she'd regret. Against all expectations, she didn't hate her father. He was capable of a gruff kind of love and was protective of her in his own way. He just had the personality of a grizzly bear with a sore butt most of the time.

The main street was blocked. A transport was parked in the middle. Plumes of blue-grey smoke told Dala it hadn't meant to stop there. The Shinra logo on the side also told her it had probably been destined for the reactor. As she watched, two men pored over the problem while a third hung back. The talking two were tall and broad, built like concrete outhouses, which wasn't unusual in Nibelheim. The one hanging back caught her eye mainly because he was so different – short and lean, buried in a thick duffel coat with legs sticking out beneath like toothpicks. Tufts of blond hair stuck out from under his bobble hat.

 _Outsider_ , Dala thought dismissively. No Nibelheimer worth his salt would wear a bobble hat.

She was surprised when he looked up. She was even more surprised when he tromped over to her. She stared, taken aback. Shinra people avoided the townsfolk. It was like some unspoken rule: if you didn't work at the reactor, you were a nobody. As he got closer, she could see he wasn't very old. Or maybe he just had a baby face, shaved clean and scrubbed so he had no protection against the elements.

"What ho." He had a young voice as well. Too bad she had no idea what he'd just said. Had he just insulted her?

"Did you just call me something rude?"

"What? Oh, no! I didn't … I mean, uh, hello there." He went on apologetically, "Heartily sorry for blocking the street. Engine trouble. The driver assures me it shouldn't take long to fix, but he also said that when we were halfway up the mountain, and I was sitting in the cold for nearly three hours that time."

"Uh … it's fine," Dala replied, nonplussed. Did he think she was someone important? Why would he bother apologising to _her_ like this? "Really. Nobody's out at this time of day anyway. It's lunchtime."

As if on cue, a loud gurgle cut the air. The outsider's cheeks were already pink with cold, so Dala couldn't tell if he was embarrassed. He folded his arms across his stomach, as if to stifle another rumble. "Ah. I broke my watch, but did think it might be past midday. If you please, is there anywhere a hungry soul could get a bite to eat around here? A café or an eatery of some description? I'd be most grateful if you could point me in the right direction. We set out so early that I last ate before the sun came up. Now my stomach thinks my throat has been cut."

"There's nothing like that in Nibelheim. We're not exactly on a tourist route."

"Oh. Well. No, I suppose not." He looked around. "A quaint place, though. Very picturesque. I imagine life around here is rather peaceful."

"Where there aren't marauding dragons to worry about," Dala said tightly.

He turned big eyes on her. "Are dragons a real problem?" Alarm laced the question.

"Only if you get a male trying to extend its territory, or two males competing for the same territory. Mostly the bigger breeds keep the smaller ones in check. You only have to worry if you're caught in the open with no weapons, which is why only the best hunters go out after them."

"People actually go _hunting_ dragons in these parts?"

"Of course. It's how we made our living before the mako reactor." Her words tightened even further, like an elastic band wound around and around her voice.

"I'd heard mountain folk were tough but I never …" He trailed off, looking at the surrounding houses with new respect. "Goodness gracious. Are there … a lot of causalities?"

She sighed. Lowlanders. "Why are you so interested?"

He blinked at her. "I was just making conversation. If I'm to be staying in the area for the foreseeable future, it would seem to make sense that I understand local customs and suchlike. Wouldn't it?" he added at her expression.

Dala snorted. She tried to cover the noise with a hand over her nose. Her cheeks reddened. It was unladylike to snort. Plus, she was pretty sure snot had just fired out. That was mortifying, Shinra flunky or not. She cleared her throat and went on, a little primly, "Shinra employees don't usually bother with stuff like that. They just stay over at the reactor, or in the mansion. They don't like mixing with lowly townspeople."

"Why on earth not?"

She shrugged. "Backwater hicks and educated scientists don't share many topics of conversation."

"But we're talking, aren't we?"

Her cheeks grew even hotter. She wondered why. The stranger's bright blue eyes were like Sapphire Dragon scales, glinting in the sun. She felt uncomfortable, like something under a microscope. What must he think of her, with her mannish boots and cold-chapped skin? His accent was strange. She had never heard anything like it before. He probably came from the rich part of Midgar, or some other built up area where women were beautiful and knew about things like culture and fine food – or at least which end of a Bunsen burner was up.

He continued to stare at her expectantly.

Her toes squirmed in her boots. "You're just being polite."

"Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to talk to a pretty girl." His smile was bright as his eyes. "Maybe it was fate my transport broke down here, just as you happened to be passing."

"I don't believe in fate."

"Call it good luck, then. You do believe in luck?" He sighed and pushed his hat off his forehead. It left a corrugated line, like a raised red barcode. It was endearing.

Dala retreated a step. Shinra lackeys weren't supposed to be boyishly endearing.

His expression grew rueful. "I'm not making much of a first impression, am I? Look, I was assigned to this post without knowing much about it. I'm just a junior researcher. I'm not even sure what I'm meant to be doing up here until I meet the professor in charge, and I'm told he won't be back until this evening. Until then, I'm at a loose end. I really would like to know more about Nibelheim. That is, if you'd consent to being my guide for a quick excursion about the municipality to introduce me to any vital particulars of which I should be aware."

No native Nibelheimer talked that way. They weren't quite at the grunts-in-place-of-words stage of evolution, but neither did they use five words when one would do. Dala found herself intrigued by this odd young man. He was unlike any Shinra employee she had met before. Not that she had met many, but she was sure he wasn't like them.

"Quick would be the word for it," she replied. She stuck out her hand, briefly wishing her fingerless gloves weren't so threadbare. She pushed the thought away. He was just a Shinra lackey. His opinion of her hands and clothes didn't matter. "My name's Dala Bergmädchen."

He shook her hand. If he thought her gloves were disgusting, he didn't show it. "Thoroughly pleased to meet you, Dala. I'm Skye Strife."

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

_"My name's Dala Bergmädchen."_

\- 'Bergmädchen' roughly means 'mountain daughter' or 'daughter of the mountains' in German.


	5. Skye: Outsider

Skye looked at Dala. Dala looked at Skye. She had no idea what she looked like, but it had to be bad. He looked all blurry from the tears in her eyes. Her head thrummed with a silent prayer and her throat felt like she had swallowed wet cement.

"I …" Skye started, but then stopped. "My tenure is … it's due up. I'm meant to be leaving …" His gaze went to the path back into town.

Usually he came to her. She rarely went to the mansion, where he stayed in dorms with all the other research assistants. She had before, but the catcalls were too much – especially when one guy got fresh with her. She ended up giving him a shiner after Skye came to save her and the guy bloodied his nose.

Her chin dropped onto her chest. Her worst fears were confirmed. She didn't know what she'd been expecting. He couldn't stay, after all. She wouldn't dream of asking. His career was in Midgar and she knew how much that meant to him. Skye had spent his whole life dreaming of science and how the world worked. He had lost sleep and friends studying to get this far. He had nearly given himself a nervous breakdown so he could graduate at the top of his class. If he asked for leave now he would never regain the ground he lost. In Shinra, research was a cutthroat business; there were always plenty of young men and women willing to be dogsbodies if it got their feet on the ladder.

"I understand," she said in an approximation of composure. She thought she pulled it off pretty well. "I just thought you'd like to know." She sucked in a breath, wondering how to say she wouldn't be getting rid of it without sounding like she was challenging him to fulfill a duty she was already making plans to fulfill alone. Her father wouldn't be any help, but there were rooms in town she could rent until she figured out what to do next. Even if it meant leaving Nibelheim … and her mother's grave … and her friends and relatives … _Oh hell, don't break down now. Wait until Skye can't see, at least._

Skye's touch was gentle as he took her hands. She realised she'd balled them into fists only when he unwound her fingers. "I don't have a ring."

"Wh-what?"

"That's customary in situations like this, isn't it? I can still go down on one knee if you like, but dash it all, the only thing I have that could pass as a ring is the pull off a can of soda, and that's hardly romantic, is it?" He always talked in questions. The whole world was a series of answers he wanted to find out.

Dala was aghast. "I'm not asking for a shotgun wedding!"

"Good, because that's not what I'm offering."

She stared at him. "But … b-but your job –"

"Bugger the job, eh? You're more important, aren't you? Of course you are."

"Don't say that just because I've forced your hand –"

"Why are you assuming I think this is bad? This is wonderful news! Stupendous! Spectacular! Marvelous, even!" His grin was as wide as a ravine. "Not only am I going to be a father, we get to stay together. Dala, don't you understand? I love you. The most generous Shinra research grant in the world can't compare to that." He let go and knelt in front of her. "Dala Bergmädchen, would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

The town wouldn't accept him. They already thought badly of him for 'stringing her along'. He was just a Shinra lackey to them, even if his blond hair and pale skin said there was mountain-blood somewhere in his family tree. They hated his posh voice and educated ways. They hated the way he walked, the way he talked, his attempts to make them like him. They didn't know how deeply his relationship with their Dala had evolved, mostly in secret, over the past year. Now, on the cusp of his departure, they were about to find out – plus a whole lot more besides. Dala's heart trembled at the thought.

Skye grasped her shaking fingers in his and rose to wrap her in a hug. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"I can't leave my father. He's so sick since the pneumonia –"

"Then we'll jolly well live here, won't we? We can get a place not far from your father's."

"But –"

"Whatever problems there may be, my sweetheart, we'll deal with them when we come to them, eh? For now, let's just concentrate on the good stuff, all right?" He was smiling against the side of her neck. She could feel the curve of his mouth. It made her belly flutter and her heart soar. "I'm going to be a dad. And you're going to be a mum. How incredible is that?"

Dala sniffed. "Pretty damn incredible."

"Dala! Such language from a blushing bride-to-be."

"Oh shut up," she laughed, and kissed him.


	6. Sephiroth: Prodigy

Sephiroth wasn't sure what to make of this place. The air was thinner than he was used to, but also cleaner. He wondered whether that was why his latest tests were being held here. His reflexes, durability and dexterity were constantly tested across all manner of terrains. This wasn't the first time he had been brought to a mountain range, or a snowy environment. His resilience to the cold was long-established, but the white-coats like to double, triple and quadruple check their results.

This time that was fine with him. Opportunities to go outside without slashing things to bits came rarely. He relished the chance whenever he could. Nothing so pedestrian as someone leaving his door unlocked ever happened – except that this time it did.

Maybe it was fate. If he had known what fate was, he might have considered the possibility. As it was, he simply walked out and nobody stopped him, each thinking he was going somewhere he was meant to be.

He wasn't trying to run away. He tried that once or twice when he was much smaller. An orderly had taken an interest in him. He hadn't wanted to test or question or measure Shinra's child prodigy, which had confused Sephiroth until the man explained that he was just worried about him.

"A kid your age should be kept locked away. You barely have any social skills other than how to act around labs and training grounds."

"Is that unusual?"

The orderly had described a world beyond those places. He had told Sephiroth about something called 'schools' and other gatherings of young humans.

"They fight each other?"

"No, they just hang out together."

"Hang … out? Of what?"

"They're friends. They like spending time together, not doing much of anything."

"That sounds like a counterproductive use of their time."

"How old are you?"

"Six years and seventeen days old. Why?"

Sephiroth had listened to the stories of 'schools' with interest and decided he wanted to see those places. Of course, his request was denied, so he had tried to go without permission. The first time they wrote off his escape as a bad reaction to the latest batch of drugs. The second time they listened to what he was trying to do.

"I wish to see a school and 'hang out' with its inhabitants."

The orderly disappeared not long afterward. Sephiroth was allowed periods of time outside from then on, although only under strict supervision.

"May I see a school?" he asked Professor Hojo.

Hojo had shaken his head. "What would be the point? You're better than any dross those failing educational institutions churn out."

Despite the Professor's scorn, 'school' continued to fascinate Sephiroth. That type of non-combat, non-strategic training was so foreign. His 'peers' all went to the school-place even though it didn't teach them tracking, or swordplay, or anything remotely useful.

So when he heard the chime of a bell and saw crowds of youngsters in the little mountain town, he headed that way. He wanted to understand. Nobody in the labs ever told him the reason for anything, and never answered his questions, or if they did they answered in ways he found difficult to understand. Hojo was excellent at answering questions without actually answering them. That had bred a deep-seated desire in Sephiroth to _know_ things, which was rarely, if ever, satisfied.

Today turned out to be irregular at the school-place as well. He watched at a distance as all but one youngster filed into the blocky building. The one the adults kept back had an expression of alarm, which made Sephiroth uncomfortable for reasons he couldn't name. His exceptional hearing picked up the conversation between the two adults and one child as if they were standing next to him.

He knew what a blizzard was. The white-coats had made him run training exercises during one yesterday, when the rest of the town battened down their hatches to wait it out. He was fine, naturally, but according to this conversation that had not been the case everywhere.

"He was reckless," said the man, who identified himself as 'Principal Mazur'. "Nobody who grew up in Nibelheim would've taken that kind of risk, even for a bounty like that. Black Dragon pelts fetch a high price, but they're not worth wading into a snowstorm."

"Can't you show some compassion?" the woman demanded. Her cheeks were wet.

Sephiroth tried to remember the word for expelling water from eye-ducts. He didn't think he had ever done it himself unless in the middle of a desert during a sandstorm.

"Why don't you do something useful, instead of standing there, criticising my husband like you have any right to judge him. You know as well as I do that he only took such a stupid risk because he was finally allowed into a dragon-hunting party. He thought it meant people were finally accepting him. He thought … he thought he was finally becoming … one of us." Her upper lip curled. "Sorry, one of _you_. Because _I'm_ not a Nibelheimer anymore, right? Not since I married an outsider. Even though I've lived here all my life; even though I grew up in the same house I'm living in now; even though I went to school here – you were my principal, Mazur!After all these years, can you blame Skye for wanting to impress people so we could live in peace, instead of feeling like we don't belong? He just wanted to be acknowledged. H-He just … he wanted you people to think he was worth something. He wanted me to fit in. He blamed himself for me being unhappy. And n-now …"

"Mom?" said the child. "Mommy?"

The woman put a hand to her mouth. She stared at the listening child in horror. She knelt and put her arms around it in a non-confining hold. Sephiroth wondered what the point of the gesture was, since it was in no way strong enough to hold onto the child if it chose to break free.

"It's okay, sweetheart," she said at a volume obviously intended for only the child to hear. "It's okay. You ignore everything I just said. I'm talking rubbish."

"Isn't Daddy coming home today either?"

"… No, sweetie."

"But he already missed dinner last night!"

"I know."

"He'll be hungry if he misses dinner tonight as well. How about tomorrow? Will he be back tomorrow?"

"Daddy's … he's not coming home for a long time."

"Why not?"

"He ... can't."

"Did he go back to the city?"

"No."

"Then where is he? Is he hiding? Is that why you won't let me go to class? The teacher will yell if I miss too much. She already yells at me a whole bunch. I don't want to make her even madder."

The woman expelled more liquid from her eyes. She appeared to be having trouble breathing. Sephiroth watched as she led the confused child away.

He was rather confused himself, but he now understood that the pair were biologically related. The physical similarities were striking. That gave him pause for a very different reason.

He didn't have a biological mother. She had died so he could live. He had been told that for as long as he could remember. He wasn't given to what-ifs, but the one that did occasionally occur to him revolved around his unknown mother. Watching the woman and child walk away from the school, he wondered whether non-confining holds and ridiculous lies were part of the parent-child relationship. Things were definitely _not_ okay, yet the mother had told her son they were. If Sephiroth's own mother had survived, would she also have lied to him like that?

Nobody lied to him at the labs. They didn't tell him things, but omitting truths wasn't the same as changing them into lies. Sephiroth's life was a built upon a carefully stacked set of facts: he was the strongest, the fastest, the best. He was special. He was one of a kind. The white-coats knew what was best for him. Sometimes pain was necessary. He had to obey the rules. The word of Shinra was indisputable. These things were the structure of his existence. A mother was supposed to protect her offspring and do what was best for her progeny. How, then, could lies ever be a reasonable course of action? Did he truly want someone in his life if their presence would destabilise its structure that way?

He returned to the labs still mulling over this question. The place was in an uproar. He endured their reprimands without argument. The white-coats returned him to his quarters, where he rested, as was sensible. Nobody encircled him with a non-confining hold. Nobody expelled water from their eyes at his safe return. They were just glad Hojo didn't know his pet had been missing for an entire afternoon. He was reproached and he accepted it, not wishing for anything more.


	7. Scarlet: High-Flier

Scarlet raised her head slowly, in case bits fell off. That wasn't even hyperbole. She'd hit the wall pretty hard – enough to make a dent in the plaster. She could just see it from here, mottled red in the centre. Something wet oozed down her temple and into her eye. Oh well, if she was bleeding maybe he'd stop quicker. Quick gratification with a visual stimulus.

Look at her, knowing all these big words. None of them ever meant anything when she got home at night. She was coming top of all her classes, but he didn't ever ask. She gave her report card directly to Mom. At least Mom cared. She'd almost cried when she saw all the As, and murmured about putting money aside for further education after she graduated high school. As if her father would ever shell out for university. As if Scarlet would ever go and leave her mother behind to take this kind of thing in her stead. Her mother had endured it while Scarlet was a baby, to keep her daughter safe. Now it was Scarlet's turn to repay that protection.

"… Stupid little ..." The bass rumble came from high above. The echo was probably more to do with the ringing in her head, though.

Her ears thumped and she could feel her pulse in her throat. It mercifully drowned out most of the tirade. She lay still, letting his anger burn itself out. It always did eventually. It was worse to fight back. That just prolonged his fury and gave him a moving target. He wasn't into beating dead horses. No fun there. She'd long ago learned that if she just kept her head down and took whatever he dished out he'd grow tired of her weakness and leave her alone, and while he was focussed on her, at least, he left Mom alone.

"… patronising … full of yourself … high and mighty … teach you a lesson … do it again and again until you learn …"

He was still going. The words were clipped and perfectly pronounced. It'd be better if he was drunk. Not that it would make the punches hurt any less, but at least she could blame the drink for putting into his mouth the evil things he said. Her father knew exactly what he was saying. He could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and then stab you through the heart with it.

Scarlet was aware of him gripping her shoulder and pulling her up. This was new. Usually he just let her lay there when she fell down. Sometimes he kicked her side, but that was rare. She blinked into her father's reddened face and saw for the first time the crumpled paper in his fist.

Oh no.

"… thought you could keep this from me? Like I'd let any daughter of mine get ideas above herself at one of those snooty …"

The letter was from Midgar University about a scholarship programme her teacher had enquired about on her behalf. Thinking Scarlet would appreciate it, he'd put her name down and written a glowing reference. That and her grades had gotten the interest of the selection board. Scarlet had intercepted the letter when she found out and hidden it in her room where even her mother couldn't find it. No point in giving anyone false hope – or a reason to kick off.

She knew she should just get rid of it. Keeping it around was dangerous, but she couldn't bring herself to destroy it, even though there was no chance she'd ever take up the provisional place they'd offered. That letter was evidence she wasn't the stupid little nobody her father constantly told her she was. It was proof that if she wanted, she could be somebody, instead of just settling for a life as a wife and baby-maker of some boy who met his approval. She didn't have many keepsakes, since her father knew destroying them was an easy way of getting at her, but she valued that letter despite the danger if he ever found out about it. Nobody ever did anything in this house without her father's permission.

But he had found it. She should have guessed when he seized her before she'd even crossed the threshold. Usually he at least let her close the door and do something he didn't like before he started, so the neighbours couldn't see and he could justify 'disciplining' his family in his own mind.

"D-Daddy …" she managed to get out as he shook her. She never called him that anymore. It was a childish name, but maybe that would work in her favour. Maybe he'd be shocked into letting her go, like in those movies and TV shows about domestic abusers. "D-Daddy stop, p-please!"

"You were going to leave!" he thundered. "Even after I said no to university, you were going to defy me. You've been planning this all along, haven't you? _Haven't you_?"

"N-No, Daddy, you don't understand. My teacher –"

"That's why you've always been so snotty," her father continued like she hadn't spoken. "Little Miss Superior, looking down her nose at her dear old dad and the life he has to work so hard to maintain for her. Nothing has ever been good enough for you, has it? You think you're so much better than this life. Like _you_ deserve more than the rest of us. You've always looked down on me, on my job at the power plant, on this house, on the food I work so goddamn hard to put on the table. You've never appreciated anything I've done for you! you were just waiting to get away, like _you_ could ever make something of yourself!"

There was sudden pressure on her windpipe. Scarlet gasped. He was choking her! She struggled to breathe, scrabbling at the hands wrapped around her throat. This was a whole new level of anger. She'd never seen her father this mad before. Reason had gone out of the window, or he'd have foreseen the consequences of leaving marks where people could see. The pressure increased, and the thumping in her head grew louder.

 _He's going to kill me_ , she thought abruptly. _He's so mad, he's actually going to kill me._

Sparkles burst at the edges of her vision. Her movements grew sluggish. She couldn't breathe. The pressure inside her head was incredible. Everything started to go black.

And then the pressure vanished. Air rushed into her lungs. She sucked at it greedily. She flopped back onto the floor and just lay gasping for a minute, as the world spun around her and her eyeballs shrank to better fit their sockets. When she could think straight again she tried to scramble upright, to get away before her father could launch another attack.

Except that he wasn't going to. He never would again.

Her mother stood over them both, wild-eyed and panting. There was a red smear across the front of the demure, high-necked, long-skirted dress her husband always insisted she wore. Some of her million-and-one hairpins had come loose, probably as she rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the long carving knife off the counter, ran back into the hall and plunged it into his back.

Scarlet stared at the crumpled heap that moments earlier had been her father. Her mother had tolerated years of his cruelty, but today she'd finally snapped. Tendrils of blonde hair hung around her face, moving as she shook her head from side to side.

"What have I done?" she muttered brokenly. The look in her eyes was unfettered grief and … regret? Seriously? Even after everything, she was still apologetic? "What have I _done_?"

Scarlet coughed. Her throat felt raw. She tried to talk, but the words came out like the one time her father hit her in the face and she had to go to the dentist to get her chipped tooth fixed. The novocaine had number one half of her mouth so she drooled and couldn't talk properly, she sounded the same way now.

Her mother looked at her. Emotions flickered behind her blue eyes. Her mouth set into a grim line. "Scarlet," she said flatly. "This is it. This is where it all changed for you. It ends here. You have to make something of your life now. You have to be more than me. You can't end up like … this." She gestured at her neat-as-a-pin apartment, the high rise building they lived in with all the other power plant workers, her chintz furniture, her net curtains, and her dead husband. "You have to be stronger – stronger than me. I threw it all away because I was scared. Because I was weak. I let …" She broke off, centred herself, and carried on huskily, "You're worth more than this. No matter what he said, _you_ are better than this. You have the chance to be more now, sweetheart. Don't waste it." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and whispered, "I love you." Then she tore out of the hall, into the sitting room, and wrenched open the French windows onto the balcony.

Scarlet realised what she was about to do and screamed, but it was too late.

The police officers who came commented on how dispassionate the daughter of the murder-suicide couple had been. She spoke flatly when giving her statement, did everything the medics asked of her, and went quietly wherever she was told to go. It wasn't like she was shell-shocked, they said; more like she genuinely didn't care about what had happened. Although given the recognisable signs of abuse that emerged during the investigation, maybe that wasn't unexpected. The father was violent and the mother did nothing to help until the very end.

They didn't understand a damn thing. Nobody did. Scarlet never told anybody the truth, either. She'd grown used to being silent about her private life, and the habit continued as she finished high school and took up the scholarship that had both caused and solved all her problems. People whispered behind her back – of course they did. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in their ranks, and the gossipmongers were merciless. There was a stigma to her amongst the people who'd known her parents. Theirs was a community of closed doors and twitching curtains.

Scarlet was glad to get away from it. When she entered the world of Midgar University she immediately set to work becoming the strongest, the best, the most successful, leaving behind the whispers and gossip. Eventually new whispers took their place – stories of how ruthless she was, how committed to succeed, and how she didn't care who she trampled to get to the top. She worked harder, stayed later in the labs and library, streaked ahead of her classmates and left them choking in her dust. She didn't have to hide her talent from anyone anymore, and she revelled in that freedom, even as guilt bit into the back of her brain like a dog with lockjaw.

She made connections early. The professors loved her as much as they were intimidated by her. They'd never seen anyone so driven before, and appreciated the way she listened intently to everything they had to teach instead of dozing off in the back row like many students. It didn't hurt that she was a stone cold fox, even with her hair scraped into a functional ponytail and her curves masked in baggy, uninspiring clothes.

Scarlet was impressive to look at, though she'd never been allowed to flaunt her beauty while living under her father's thumb. Her wardrobe since early puberty had been limited to browns and greys, the baggier the better. Nothing had ever really been able to mask them, so she'd also worn heavy coats, even in summer, and sometimes been trapped in the bathroom so he could scrub her face to make sure she looked 'appropriate' by his standards.

But her father wasn't calling the shots anymore. She quickly realised that to be truly successful you had to make full use of _all_ weapons at your disposal, and when one lecturer made a pass at her she added her looks to her arsenal. She shed the modest clothes of her childhood and started wearing provocative outfits in a range of bright colours – red being her favourite. Red was the colour of danger, but it was also desire, and men seemed to react best to the hidden message in her colour coding. She made her legs look longer and sexier in heels, even for morning lectures. She bought magazines and styled her hair like the models. She got a job at a beauty parlour to pay the bills and also to pick up tips so she didn't look like some stupid little girl playing dress-up when she tried out make-up.

She didn't look like a swot anymore. When people underestimated her she played on it, then blindsided them with her intelligence. It was a winning scheme, and one that put her ahead of her competition when it came to courting jobs later on. Scarlet had it all – looks and brains, plus enough determination and willpower to sink a barge. She got herself invited to parties for alumni and governors, schmoozing as relentlessly as she studied. She made sure she was noticed, and when she came to the end of her time at university she was perfectly placed to get and go where she wanted, all the while laughing at her peers and their last-minute cramming for jobs she'd already requisitioned.

"Bitch," most muttered.

"And proud of it," she replied airily. She knew where she was headed.

Nobody would ever tell Scarlet how to live her life again. She would be top of the heap, no matter what. She would grab power, make tough decisions, and sacrifice anything and anyone to be top dog. The corporate ladder was more a moving staircase, and to be top of the top, by whatever means necessary, she knew where she had to go.

The day she stared at the nameplate on her door, with the little Shinra logo embossed in the corner, was one of supreme satisfaction. Shinra was top dog of the corporate world. Everything came back to Shinra in the end. As an executive, she now wielded the kind of power her father, domineering over his mini kingdom and two frightened subjects, had only ever dreamed of.

"I did it, Mom," she murmured behind the privacy of her locked office door. "I made something of myself." She took out the list of executives from the Shinra PR brochure and went immediately to the top. "And I won't stop until I really am top of the heap."

The edge of the paper crumpled a little under her fingers. President Shinra was a corpulent, grotesque blob of a man, but that was where the power lay, so that was where Scarlet needed to aim for. She would secure her place at the top, by whatever means necessary.

"That Scarlet," people muttered when they thought she couldn't hear. "What a bitch."

None of them ever noticed her keening, ear-splitting laughter had an edge that sounded a lot like a child crying for its mother.


	8. Felicia: Daddy's Girl

Felicia wished her father told stories the way other kids' fathers did. He was pretty good at it. She had a few half-lidded memories of him doing it. He was a surprisingly good storyteller, but nowadays he never had the time or the interest. Sometimes she wondered whether that man in her memories was someone she'd made up or dreamed.

Her mother tried, but she couldn't tell a story worth toffee. She knew fairytales and a few folktales, but Felicia could tell those herself, and better. Mostly her mother trailed off and looked embarrassed that she couldn't even entertain a child who _wanted_ to listen. She wasn't a bad mother or anything – they were poor, but Felicia never went hungry, or felt self-conscious about the invisible repairs in her threadbare clothes. Still, her mother was no storyteller, and as her father became more and more entrenched in his new job, the words he used to spend freely became clipped and rationed, like he was always afraid of saying more than he should.

Once when she was seven, when everyone thought she was in bed asleep, Felicia cowered at the foot of the stairs and listened to her parents fight.

"But why Midgar, of all places?" her mother demanded, voice thick like she was close to either crying or screaming.

"Because that's where the work is."

"I'm not taking Felicia to that fleapit."

"Fine."

"That's it? That's all you've got to say?"

"What do you want me to say?" Felicia hated the way her father's voice had become so tight, like he had a knot in his windpipe and all the things he was supposed to say at that moment were stuck behind it.

"I don't know!" her mother whisper-yelled. Even in the heat of the moment she hadn't forgotten the little girl she thought was upstairs.

"Then I have no answer I haven't already given," her father said at normal volume. "I took the job because we were a hairsbreadth from insolvency. You encouraged me to go where the work was. I helped start that department. They need me."

"But _permanently_ living in Midgar …" her mother trailed off. "That place is bad news. And you're working for the biggest bad news of them all. You can't expect to uproot us just so we can go live with all the other Shinra wives and children on some … some grubby estate! I've lived my whole life in Kalm. Everything I know and love is here. All my friends and family –"

"And a big help they were when we needed them. My wages from Shinra have kept us off the streets, Emily. Now they're offering me a promotion I can't afford to turn down."

"Even if it means living there without us?"

He didn't even hesitate. "Even then."

Her mother's voice lost all confrontation. From the squeak, Felicia could imagine her slumping into a chair and staring up at the man she'd married; the man she'd promised never to part from until one of them died. There was such _defeat_ in her tone. Even though the hallway wasn't cold, Felicia shivered and hugged her knees close.

"You've changed, Veld. You used to hate Shinra. What happened to your big ideas about how they can't be trusted?"

"Times change. People too."

"I suppose they do," her mother said softly.

Felicia crept back to her room and buried herself under the bedclothes. She waited for her father to say goodbye, or even hello. He'd come home from Midgar that morning with barely a word to anyone, and the sense that coming home at all with some giant inconvenience. Whatever her father did, he did wholeheartedly. It used to be he lived for his wife and daughter. Now that dependability was Shinra's, to call on whenever they wished – like at three o' clock in the morning, so when she went down for breakfast the next day he was already gone.

She cried herself to sleep for three nights straight. She tried to convince herself he'd just forgotten, and would apologise when he came back again. She took to sitting on the porch, waiting eagerly for his arrival. She constructed little scenarios in her head – her father sweeping her into his arms, laughing, not minding when she nuzzled her sticky face against the shoulder of his suit. Her mother's scepticism was a hurdle to be overcome, which Felicia did by a combination of ignoring the signs and flat-out denial. Her father would come back, and everything would fix itself. All she had to do was keep believing and it'd all turn out right. You'll see.

So she was in the perfect spot to see the woman when she came stumbling along the road in her torn cloak. Her skirt was brown with old dry mud; the kind you couldn't find around Kalm. The woman was exhausted, her face pinched with hunger and the beginning of dehydration. There was also a splint around her leg, tied with a bloodied bandage. Their house was right at the edge of the town, the first one you saw when you came down the main thoroughfare. The woman stood right in the middle of the road, blinking faster than a hummingbird could beat its wings. Then she fell over and didn't get up again.

Felicia yelled for her mother, who came running with a gasp.

"What on –"

"Is she alive? Mummy, is she still alive?"

"She's breathing. Hurry, Felicia. Get the blanket off the porch swing and bring it here."

Together they dragged the stranger inside where it was cooler.

"Who is she?" Felicia asked.

"I have no idea, honey, but she's in a bad way. Hurry and fetch the big pitcher from the kitchen. Fill it with water and bring it here. Careful you don't drop it."

"Like I did the other one," Felicia blushed, remembering the wedding gift and how her mother had cried when it accidentally broke.

Now, however, she just looked a little sad at the memory. "Actually, I just meant it would make a mess we don't have time to clean up."

"Oh."

If Felicia's mother hadn't been a nurse before Shinra budget cuts closed Kalm Hospital, the woman may have died, or at least suffered organ damage. As it was, she took up the bed in Felicia's room and lay there, inert, as her body knitted itself back together. It was like something out of a story. In real life people rarely took strangers into their home and cared for them, no matter how hurt they were. It just wasn't the done thing. Anything could happen – you could be murdered in your bed, or robbed blind, or have your children stolen if you opened your home willy-nilly to every waif or stray.

The neighbours talked. Of course they did. They'd talked about Felicia's father, his work for Shinra, the odd hours he kept and that time he arrived home and left a bloody footprint on the front porch. If something so small could be a hot topic, then taking in an outsider must have filled afternoon tea conversations up and down the town.

"I don't know why I trust her," Felicia's mother admitted when one person asked why she'd let someone she knew nothing about into the house – especially with a small child around. "I just … do. She's very trustworthy."

"You have no idea who she is, Emily. For all you know, she's some escaped criminal on the run from the law, or a mass-murderer hiding from the families of her victims, or a swindler lying low to wait out the aftermath of her latest scam. You could be sheltering a felon!"

Since that neighbour was known for his overactive imagination, nobody gave his theories much credit. Nonetheless, the truth remained that the stranger was … well, _strange_. It wasn't normal to be travelling alone on foot in these parts, and definitely not in the state she'd been in. Not if you had nothing to hide.

"She's trustworthy," Felicia's mother maintained.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"How can't you?"

The neighbours remained unconvinced, but Felicia knew what her mother meant. There was something special about the woman; a sense that even though you'd never met her before, she knew you and you knew her, and that was exactly as it should be. When she smiled you automatically smiled back, even when you wanted to be suspicious of her sitting up in _your_ bed, eating _your_ food, staring around at _your_ things and commenting on how nice you kept _your_ house.

"This is very generous of you," she said over a plate of stew seasoned with lots of herbs and spices even though they didn't have to disguise the taste of bad meat anymore. "But I know I've outstayed my welcome."

"Nonsense," said Felicia's mother. "You're welcome to stay as long as you need to."

"But I –"

"You can't go back on the road until you're back to full health, and _I'll_ decide when that is. And I could always use a babysitter who knows how to tell stories properly."

The woman stared at her, and then nodded, happiness catching in her throat.

She didn't volunteer any personal information, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. She was good company, kind and helpful when she was finally able to get up, and did what not many adults allowed themselves to do – she loved to play.

Proper playing, too. The kind where you just let yourself go and became a little kid again. The kind of whooping, screeching, reckless playfulness most people outgrew in puberty. Felicia knew she was missing something, but not what until the first time they both collapsed, breathless and laughing, and she realised what she'd been missing was a friend. No parents let their kids play at her house since her father started working for Shinra.

"Do you … do you mind playing with me?" Felicia asked that first time, hesitant. "I mean, you prolly have all sorts of things you should be doing instead, an' all –"

"Felicia, there's nothing I'd rather do more than this."

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"You're not just saying that?"

"I never 'just say' anything."

"I guess. Hey, will you answer a question for me?"

"If I answer that'd make it two questions."

"Why did you come to Kalm?"

The woman went quiet for a long time before answering. "It was where I was meant to be."

"Huh?"

"I just picked a direction and kept on walking. Kalm was between me and the horizon. Then you and your mom took me in, which is as good an indication as any that I'm meant to stay here a while."

A while? Felicia frowned. Her birthday candles wouldn't hit double figures for a few years yet, but she knew an omen when she heard it. "How long is a while?"

"As long as a piece of string."

"That's not a real answer!"

"I'll stay in Kalm as long as is necessary." The hesitation was loaded with meaning, none of which Felicia could understand. "And safe."

Felicia wasn't stupid. She knew that the most obvious reason for a lone woman to be out on the road, unsupplied, injured and without destination was if she was running way from something – or someone. And you didn't run away from good stuff.

"Kalm is safe. Nobody bad can get you in Kalm. My dad protects the town."

"Does he now?"

"Uh-huh. Even though he's not around a lot anymore. He still looks out for us where he is. He's still working real hard! He just can't home so much, and he's kind of crabby when he is here, but I'm sure that's just stress and thanks-for-eye-and-teeth."

"And _what_?"

Felicia sounded out the word she'd heard her mother use to a nosy neighbour.

"Do you mean _anxiety_?"

"Yeah, that's it. Anyhow, that's why my dad isn't here right now. I was all sad about it, but then you came, and it's really hard to be sad around you. You're, like, the least saddest person in the world, so I don't feel awful and all missing-my-dad when you're around."

"That's … really very sweet of you, Felicia."

Felicia clicked the heels of her shoes together and studied the scuffed toes. "I wish you could stay here an' be my friend forever and ever."

"Felicia …"

"And I hope whatever nasty people chased you before, and made you fall down the cliff outside town and hurt your leg, never ever finds you again. But if they do, I'll beat them up for you."

"Oh, sweetheart."

"My daddy says sometimes force is inev-… inevee… necessary. You can't help it. So you just have to go with it. That's what he says." At last Felicia looked at her unlikely friend – way past being a teenager, but not nearly as old as her mom. An adult in everything except the mischievous sparkle in her green eyes, which at that moment had faded at that moment into something unhappy and horrible. "Ifalna?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you like it here?"

"I love it. This is the first time I've felt like I belonged in a long time."

"Good. That means you won't leave anytime soon, right?"

"If there's one lesson I have to teach you, sweetheart, it's this: never make promises you're not certain you can keep."

"Don't you like playing with me?"

"Put it this way; if I ever had a daughter, I'd want her to be just like you."

That made Felicia feel all squiggly inside. She blushed and waggled her toes inside her shoes. "I want to be just like the heroine in your stories. The ones about the Great Cat-Bag-and-Tea."

"Great Calamity."

"Yeah, that. I like those stories about that lady who fought the monster from the crater and helped seal it away, and then led her people to the safe place where nobody could get them, and they all lived happily ever after, and she was all strong and cool and could use magic and stuff."

"Elfé," Ifalna said softly. "You mean the stories about Elfé."

"Yeah, her. She was cool."

"She was a real person."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. A long time ago, though."

"Well, yeah. 'Cause nobody could do even half of what she did anymore."

"Right," Ifalna said, even softer. "There's nobody like her left in the world."

Felicia gave her a sidelong glance. "Do you reckon someday you'll tell me the real reason you came here?"

"Maybe. When you're older."

She liked that answer. It suggested that the time before them stretched longer than a midday shadow. When you'd lived your childhood alone and unpopular, you valued whatever friendship fate supplied, even if it came from mysterious women with shady pasts, who could earn trust instantly, repel any attempts to pry into her life before Kalm, and made the sickly vegetables in the garden grow big and fat just by _talking_ to them. Felicia could overlook a lot of weirdness if it meant finally having a friend.

Which was why it hurt all the more when Ifalna left without warning. She just vanished one night, the note on her pillow full of apologies and thanks for all their kindness. She wrote that she'd had a dream warning her it was finally time to leave, and that she hoped they understood. She'd gone because she didn't want them to get into trouble for sheltering her. Some people wanted to talk to her, and she really didn't want to talk to them, but they wouldn't take no for an answer. She didn't want either Felicia or her mother to be caught up in the whole messy business.

_I'm sorry. Please understand. Love, Ifalna._

"What a strange woman," Felicia's mother said after reading the note aloud. "I'll miss her, though," she added after a moment. "Strange but nice."

Felicia said nothing, but privately bet she'd miss her more. She sat on the porch for weeks, but neither Ifalna nor her father ever reappeared.


	9. Ifalna: Widow

You could almost hear the scritch-scratching as Ifalna clawed her self-control back from the edge. She took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The smell of blood was heavy enough to taste. Knowing it was Gast's only made the nausea worse.

She stared straight ahead, at the opposite wall, not daring to look at the body. His body. No, _the_ body. That wasn't Gast. Not anymore. The spray against her cheek was still sticky, but she couldn't bring herself to wipe it off. Likewise the red spatter on the maternity blanket, stained by the blowback of the first bullet.

A low grizzling made her look down, smoothing aside a soft pastel corner. No blood had got on the baby, at least. Ifalna shushed as a distraction from what was going on. If she pretended Gast wasn't dead on the floor, Shinra employees weren't ringing her with weapons drawn, and Professor Hojo wasn't just outside the door, then perhaps none of it would be true. She'd still be Ifalna Faramis, wife, not Ifalna Faramis, widow and abductee.

She'd been running from this fate for years. She could recall in perfect detail each dream that had promised dark things for her at Shinra's hands. She'd left so many sanctuaries when her Cetra blood flared and a fresh warning came. Sometimes she's regretted leaving places so much she'd almost ignored the messages and stayed anyhow. Now she knew what might have happened if she had, and she was glad she'd never given in to her own selfishness.

Not until she met a jaded scientist who'd made the unprecedented move of leaving Shinra of his own free will, that is. Ifalna had been so impressed with that courage, and so lonely after leaving a particularly nice place called Kalm, that she'd let her guard down. She'd been foolish. And, foolishly, she'd fallen in love. It was the best and worst thing she'd ever done, and now it was over.

_Oh, Gast …_

The baby mewled.

"Hush, little one," she murmured. Every day she was still exhausted from the traumatic pregnancy and difficult birth. Months of being on the run, living hand to mouth to keep Shinra from finding them, had ultimately been a failure. Her tiredness was now just an insult to add to injury.

Her fingers flexed on the edge of the blanket. She brought the baby to her face to hide the tears she could no longer hold back.

The door opened. "Transportation will arrive shortly," said a nasal voice.

Ifalna refused to look up, but her grip on her daughter tightened. Hojo's shadow fell across them.

"I look forward to all the time we shall be spending together," he said. He sounded like he was almost laughing. The false politeness made Ifalna want to ignore the pacifism of the Ancients and pop him in the nose. Hojo had killed her husband. Even if he hadn't pulled the trigger himself, Gast was dead because of him. Aerith would never know her father because of him. "You really are the most exasperating woman to track down. Do you realise how long I've been waiting to meet you?"

"Leave us alone," she whispered hotly.

"It speaks at last." Now Hojo sounded delighted. Ifalna's impulse change from punching to strangulation. "You and that fool colleague of mine have set back our research by months. We have a lot of ground to cover if we're to catch up before Yule – next year!"

"Leave us _alone_. Haven't you done enough already?"

"Enough? After all these years of searching for a genuine Ancient? Oh no, my dear. Not even close."

Ifalna finally raised her gaze. Contrary to his tone, behind his glasses Hojo's eyes were flat and hard, like a slab of marble: covered in interesting patterns that hinted at something underneath, but cold and immoveable all the way through. Snake-eyes, her own mother would have called them. There was certainly something reptilian about the way he stared at her, and the way his gaze came to rest on the bundle in her arms.

It was then that she knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that she couldn't let this man have her daughter. A mother's duty was to guard her child, even if circumstances worked against her. That basic responsibility was the same all over the world, no matter the era, location or even species. Ifalna was the last full-blooded Cetra, but she had the same maternal instincts as any lioness, dragon mare or she-wolf. All three of those would fight to the death to protect their babies. She was no different, even if she had no claws or fangs to fight with. She had Ancient patience.

And so, when she finally did get the opportunity to save her daughter's life, Ifalna took her chance even though it was risky to the point of stupidity. She had to count on the fact that Shinra had invested countless funds and seven years of research, and that this had made them too valuable to shoot at.

She was wrong. She _should_ have counted on Hojo's mercilessness. If the secrets of the Ancients weren't to be his, he'd make damn sure they weren't anybody's.

Ifalna sat quietly in her seat on the train, Aerith bopping with excitement beside her. Of course, Aerith didn't fully understand what was going on. To her, this escape was full of wonder and excitement at finally getting out of the labs. Even slum air tasted fresh when you'd been a prisoner all your life.

Ifalna had healed her of the tranquiliser overdose dispensed by the first round of darts as they escaped – the one that came just before the guards switched to regular bullets. Slowly bleeding out from a stomach wound she was too weak to deal with after healing Aerith, Ifalna's protectiveness carried her as far as the next station, and allowed her to find someone whose spirit echoed the feeling. She had no fangs or claws, but she did have the Cetra ability to sense goodness in people she'd only just met.

"Please," she murmured, swallowing blood and no longer able to feel her midriff. "Look after her."

"I … I …" stuttered the stranger. She had kind eyes. They'd filled with a kind of horror as she realised what was happening to Ifalna.

"Please. Please don't let Shinra take her back. I only just got her out. She deserves her freedom. Please, she's … she's all I have …"

The woman swallowed, but finally nodded.

Ifalna's last sight was of Aerith's hand held tight in the stranger's, and she knew her daughter would be all right now. "Thank y-" she wheezed, but got no further before her poor abused body finally gave up and she died a true Midgar death: in public, ignored by most passers-by, and without any dignity at all.


	10. Cissnei: Foundling

Perhaps it would've been easier if she'd beaten him at chess or something. A lot of child prodigy stories had chess matches where the child beat an apparently unbeatable adult, gaining their respect and marking themselves out for greatness. Chess was a game of strategy and intelligence. If you beat people at chess you were not only showing how smart you were, but also how intense.

She didn't play chess. She hated sitting still. She wasn't especially great at her schoolwork and rarely scowled at people enough for 'intense' to stick as a good adjective when describing her. Instead, she got herself noticed by throwing a bully into a tree hard enough to knock him out. While other little girls were rooting through the bin of slightly used toys, finding dolls whose hair they could brush without it coming away in their hands, she was beating up boys more than twice her size. As far as ways of getting noticed went, that was certainly a doozy.

She expected a telling off when Matron summoned her, and dragged her heels along the corridor to the office door. She wasn't a bad kid. Not a goody two shoes, but not bad either. Still, nobody liked being told off.

Matron's office reeked of pine from the air freshener she used to cover the smell of damp. The entire orphanage was in disrepair, and you had to watch your step as you filed along the corridors in case you tripped over a warped floorboard. Nurse took care of any injuries, but she'd grown up in a tiny village with no proper hospital. There you did the best with what you could until civilisation was reachable again after the thaw. As a result Nurse was too fond of iodine and a wire brush. It was easier to just take extra care so you never ended up in the sickbay. Even Matron avoided visiting Nurse if she could. The bully whose arm had been shattered was stuck there while Nurse watched for concussion, and forced to drink cod liver oil off a spoon. How that was supposed to help was anyone's guess, but it was a pretty good punishment on top of his cast.

She sat in the chair in front of Matron's desk, kicking her heels and waiting for the knife to fall. But it didn't fall. Instead, she was introduced to a man in a dark suit who sat in a chair in front of Matron's desk. He had a scar on his face and an unfathomable expression that didn't change when he looked from Matron to her. His eyes were darker than any she'd ever seen before. She could see herself reflected in them, all curved over like when she looked into spoons during washing-up duty.

"I'm not in trouble?" she asked after a while. "For what happened with Justice?"

Matron pursed her lips. She gave names to all orphans who came to her without any, and she was fond of virtues and qualities. Amongst the girls 'Patience' 'Glory' and 'Charity' were in constant rotation, while there had been more than one boy called 'Deference' during her tenure. It was a ploy to inspire and make them feel better about themselves and the fact nobody wanted them. They were society's castoffs and they knew it. Adoptions weren't common in the slums, where birth-rates were already too high and gangs grabbed kids who ran away from institutions. Still, the woman tried her best to improve her charges' lives in whatever small ways she could – however naïve or misguided.

"He was picking on Kindness again," she insisted at Matron's disapproving look. The words came out garbled in her effort to get her side of the story out as fast as she could. "He was pulling on her braids, so I grabbed his arm, and he called me a really bad name and tried to punch me, but I saw couple of those weird gang boys with the face-tattoos through the gates yesterday, and I'm sorry because I know I'm supposed to come inside when they're around, but it was a good thing I _did_ watch them because Justice grabbed me _really hard_ , and I kind of, um, copied what those boys did with how they used their arms and where they put their legs, but I didn't realise it would, like, fling him into the tree the way it did –"

"You performed that move after only seeing it once?" The man in the suit spoke for the first time. He had a deep voice, stern and not kind, but not horrible either. His dark eyes stared at her so intently she squirmed in the hard plastic chair.

"Um … yes?" She looked to Matron for an explanation.

"We'll discuss Justice later. For now, Mr. … Veld was it?"

He didn't confirm it. He didn't even look up at Matron.

"He'd like a word with you. He was visiting us about an employment opportunity for one of the older boys, but it appears you … caught his eye." The way Matron said this announced how this wasn't a good thing in her book.

She wondered why Matron had let the man in if she didn't like him. He looked very formal. Maybe he was more important than her. Maybe he was one of the Directors or something. Matron and Nurse were always talking about the Board of Directors, and they always used hushed voices, as if just saying the name was enough to make them magically appear and put terrible curses on everyone. The Directors were the bogeymen of the orphanage. If they said so, everyone could be tossed onto the street.

Mr. Veld was still staring at her. "How old are you?"

"Go on," said Matron when she didn't answer right away.

"I'm seven."

He didn't coo or tell her what a big girl she was, like a lot of adults when they realised she was younger than they'd thought. He nodded thoughtfully and stared some more. It made her uncomfortable.

"Are you a pervert?" she asked.

Matron gasped.

"Only, Constance said grown men who like to look at little kids too much are perverts, and you've been staring at me an awful long time."

Matron hissed at her not to be so rude, but Mr. Veld raised his hand for silence.

"I'm not a pervert," he said calmly, as if it didn't bother him at all to be accused of it. "I was merely impressed by how you acquitted yourself against that boy, and continue to be so now I can add your age to your dimensions and relative upper body strength."

"Huh?" She didn't know what 'acquitted' or 'dimensions' meant, but neither sounded good. Maybe she was in trouble after all.

"You have raw talent. My discussion with your Matron has also informed me that you also have several mental markers that could work to your advantage in the field. With the right training to shape your talent into practical sills, you could be a valuable commodity and an asset worth investing in, despite your age."

"You sound like a pervert."

Matron gasped again, sucking air between her dentures.

Mr. Veld didn't flinch. "My superiors may not agree, but as a long-term investment, I believe you may be worth the risk. Your age might be an issue, but you can overcome that with the proper guidance." He talked about her being just a kid like it was a handicap, to be coped with the way Grace used crutches to get around despite her bad leg, and Humility had to have dialysis before they couldn't pay for it anymore and he disappeared.

She squinted at him. "Who _are_ you?"

"My name is Veld. I am Head of Administrative Research at the Shinra Electric Power Company."

"Are you going to adopt me or something?"

He didn't smile. He didn't even blink. "Or something."

He asked her name only afterwards. She'd assumed Matron had already told him, but answered anyway. It was difficult to tell what Veld knew and what he didn't. As the years went by she'd realised just how true this was.

She'd also realise the stupidity of her name in the life he'd chosen her for. Just as he'd spotted and plucked her from the orphanage playground, she plucked out a new name for herself and tucked the old one away in a box, along with her naïveté and what was left of her childhood. You grew up fast as a Turk. By the time her eighth birthday rolled around she was already mentally referring to herself by her new name. When, over a decade later, she introduced herself to an overly keen SOLDIER who didn't realise she'd stopped being a damsel in distress when she was seven, the words tripped off her tongue like there had never been any others.

"I'm Cissnei."


	11. Legend: Big Brother

He never figured himself big brother material. He barely remembered his parents and knew he had no siblings, so when the kid used the name, all huge eyes and innocent smile, it threw him for a loop. People didn't call him cutesy names. Generally they screamed or ran away. Sometimes they did both. Sometimes they didn't get the chance. The really stupid ones ran in the wrong direction and he had to watch their faces as they blew up.

He stopped what he was doing and looked at the kid. "What'd you just say?"

Her smile wavered. "You don't like it?" Her feet backed away a step. "Did I offend you?" She sounded scared. Shit, she had a right. He could be one terrifying asshole. Not that his enemies ever got close enough to see his best hairy eyeball.

He had been called worse. Not many people knew his real name. Actually, most people didn't. He had elected a long time ago to keep it that way. He didn't have family to protect – no Super Sekrit Identity for him – so who cared what he chose to call himself? He could go around demanding everyone refer to him as Senor Bubbles McFuddy-Duddy Chuckle-Pants, and he would get a lot of weird looks, but nobody would actually _care_ , just so long as he got his job done. In point of fact, he found it funnier to leave out his name when introducing himself. It was entertaining to see what people came up with when they didn't know what to call him.

During the war had been the worst – or was that best? – time for inventive, ego-boosting nicknames. His favourite was 'Death God of the Battlefield', although 'Legend of Bloody Death and Fiery Glory From Above' was glorifying if you didn't mind sticking around to finish saying it before the detonator went. He had liked 'Emperor of Fire' until he realised the Wutaians who called him that had actually named him after some old dragon from their mythology. Those names gave him the kind of gravitas most guys could only dream about. They made sure people were afraid before they even met him, even when they knew nothing else about him. You couldn't buy that kind of celebrity. Those who knew him as a ruthless sure-shot explosives expert had a reason to fear him, but he liked the boogieman effect too. Not a lot of people could say the mere mention of their nickname reduced grown men to jelly.

'Big Brother' was a let-down in comparison. He looked at the kid and realised it wasn't the only thing that had faded like hot tongs in water after his stint in Wutai. He had come down in the world, too. Nowadays he felt like some stupid errand boy. While part of him was glad to be out of that stinking jungle, and a tinier part was actually tiring of bloodshed, the rest chafed against the limitations peace-time placed on him. It had been a while since he got any real excitement. Being a Turk was cool, and Midgar had its own kind of stimulation, but it just wasn't the same.

The kid was still looking at him. Damn it; she expected an answer. What had she said? He wracked his brains like a broken fruit machine. A few memories jingled out. He shrugged. "Whatever. Call me Shirley, if you like."

She giggled. He softened, even as the back of his brain protested any kind of softness. Softness got you killed. Death Gods, Fiery Dragons and Legends of the Battlefield weren't soft.

This one was a good kid. You didn't find many of those in this city. A street brat – Midgar specialised in those – who hadn't turned bitter or mean yet. That made her unusual all by itself. He pegged her about eleven or twelve, small for her age and not long in this kind of life. She hadn't been born a street brat. She was still drawn to people like a moth to a flame. Established street-kids learned a long time ago that the kind of people they met were only out for what they could get. If you trusted too easily, you got taken advantage of, which meant hooking, drugs, both, or worse.

Ifrit's balls, sometimes he hated Midgar.

The kid's fine-boned face was extra angular from malnutrition. Her cupid's-bow mouth looked even bigger set against her hollow cheeks. She was all set to be a looker when her hormones really kicked in, which would have been great if she had a home and three square meals a day, but being attractive was dangerous on the streets. It wasn't safe to stand out.

Maybe that was why he hadn't shooed her away in the beginning. He had seen orphans in Wutai, orphans in Midgar and orphans in all the places he had visited in between. He was sick of seeing desperate old eyes in young faces. She wasn't quite there yet, so he had let her stick around while he and his team camped out here, and found satisfaction as the desperation leeched from her eyes with each passing day.

As far as he could tell, she didn't run with any local gang. He reckoned that was good. The gangs were bad news. A kid like her would get chewed into mince in five seconds. Poor diet and hard living had slowed her development, but puberty wasn't far off, and puberty on the streets brought all sorts of unwelcome attention whether you were a looker or not. He thought she had started hanging around while his guys staked out the reactor because Turk suits kept undesirables away. That was fine by him. They were waiting for the crooked arms dealer selling weapons to the anti-Shinra organisation holed up inside – a bunch of idiots who actually thought their HQ was secret. He had nothing better to do while he waited, and the kid played a mean game of cards for someone with such an innocent smile.

It was the shoes that told him he was really going soft. He should have told her to get lost long before, but _especially_ after the shoes.

He didn't even know why he bought them. He just saw them in the window of a store, walked inside, paid and left again, like he did it all the time. He didn't even know if they'd fit; let alone why he bought them. When he saw them on the display stand, he just had a blinding flash of her toes crushed into those ratty sneakers. She had looped elastic bands around the ends to keep the soles on. The previous night one had snapped and pinged off, striking the back of his hand. He had joked she was trying to make him show his cards. She had just blushed and looked embarrassed.

He didn't make a big deal out of the gift. When she arrived, faux-casually emerging from behind the line of garbage cans, he tossed the box at her and lit up one of his trademark cigars, like he had picked it up at a thrift store and it meant nothing to him. They were hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind exclusives, according to the tag. Like he knew enough about footwear to care?

"You'd make a good big brother," she said now. "I never had any brothers or sisters, just my Poppy. He's … gone now. My mom died a long time ago. I never knew her. It was just me and Poppy until a few months ago." She paused. "Now it's just me." Her smile turned sad and wistful.

What the hell? ' _Wistful'_? There was a time he wouldn't have known the meaning of the word. Now he was seeing it in some scrappy kid's eyes, like some sentimental romantic novelist? He was supposed to be a professional spy, intelligence gatherer, explosives expert, trained killer – the works. All that bad shit was _his_ bad shit. She should call him 'Bad Shit', not 'Big Brother'.

Why hadn't he driven her off the first day he caught her watching them? She had crouched like the garbage cans were a good shield, and kept glancing over her shoulder like she was waiting for someone to jump out and try to bash her head in.

_Fuuuuck. I do not need this. When did I become a damn humanitarian?_ He resisted the urge to throw up his hands and announce she was no longer his problem. Damn, he was in deep. He pushed the unwelcome feelings aside and shoved them down deep. He didn't have time for this now. _I got a mission. Mission first, then mental breakdown and identity crisis when I got time. Yup. Good plan._

He never asked her name. Maybe he thought that would be a step too far – as if buying her pretty footwear wasn't already verging on pervert territory. He was a stone-cold killer, but he was no paedophile. He didn't know her name and she didn't know his, so the brief time they spent together had an unreal quality. He could believe he was still the Death God of the Battlefield instead of a washed-up has-been trading on his old reputation while he settled into a cushy job as a secret agent in a snazzy suit without a mosquito or Wutaian poison-blowpipe in sight. He could sit and play cards because he _knew_ he was badass and didn't need to prove it to anyone.

An subordinate approached, adjusting collar and cuffs as he walked. The idiot was too concerned with his appearance and not enough with the murderous look he was walking onto like a sharpened stake. Putz. A lot of the new generation of Turks were putzes. They had no style or panache. Most didn't even know the meaning of 'tragedy', and they definitely hadn't lived it.

He didn't rise, watching the subordinate through his one good eye. He had lost the other a long time ago. People were intimidated by an eyepatch, even if they didnlt want to admit it. It went with the nicknames to add to his general air of mystique and badassery.

"We have movement, sir."

"Have the idiots inside decided to give themselves up?" A vain hope, but it didn't hurt to ask. He didn't bother investing much seriousness in his tone.

The anti-Shinra group had snuck into the mako reactor and taken secret control – and thus had the whole city secretly hostage – but made no move after that. At first he thought they were just stupid. Then he thought they were biding their time, waiting for something – or someone – to make a move before they made theirs. They were the slowest negotiators he had ever dealt with, but his orders were to negotiate, no matter how long it took. Even if it did mean staring at the wall most of the time and turning into a tub of lard as he waited for something to do that didn't make him want to rake his fingers down a cheese grater with boredom.

"We got ourselves a guy sneaking into the reactor through the sewers," said his subordinate.

That made him take notice. "The mole?" Someone inside Shinra had been selling arms to this group on the sly; but surely the goofball wasn't stupid enough to come here, in person, right now, when the shit was about to hit the fan n spectacular fashion? _Never underestimate the level of stupidity in the average human brain, especially when there's money involved_ , he thought. What he said was,"Define 'got'."

"Tracking right now, sir."

"So you haven't actually caught this person."

"Uh …"

"And yet you're coming to me, interrupting my game, to tell me there's someone, perhaps an important someone to our mission, sneaking into the reactor – right past our operatives – even though you've made no move to apprehend them."

"We were ... um …" His colleague flushed with embarrassment. Dumb rookie. He almost bowed as he backed off. "I'll take care of it and get back to you, sir."

"You do that."

"You can be real mean sometimes," said the kid when the guy was gone.

He grunted, moving the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "Who asked you?"

She wrinkled her nose. Then she got up, sidestepped and pirouetted, stopping with one foot raised to admire her new shoes. At some point before the hard times, she had studied ballet. He wondered, briefly, about her life before 'Poppy' bit the big one. Who would she be right now if her father had survived?

Stupid question. Dealing with what-ifs was about as much use as a teaspoon for shovelling chocobo dung. What if he hadn't gone to Wutai? What if he hadn't become a Turk? What if Sephiroth hadn't existed? What if Shinra had never been formed? What if mako's properties had never been discovered? What-ifs were ridiculous because they made you dissatisfied with things as they were. Better to just deal with the here and now.

Except that, for him, the here and now quickly became the here and there. And there. And some over there. And a few pieces over there. And some more over there.

Veld came for him when he didn't report in immediately. He knew his boss was there behind him, peering through the still-clearing dust and smoke. He didn't turn around. He waited for Veld to speak first. There was nothing he wanted to say – nothing he _could_ say. The mission had gone south after the interloper was spotted in the sewers and the terrorists inside the reactor decided it was a good time to test their new weapons on the Turks outside. Somehow, he had lost his team of rookies before his explosives could take care of the enemy. The mole escaped in the melee. Yet somehow, that wasn't what made him feel like someone was digging shrapnel out of his chest with rusty tweezers and no anaesthetic.

Veld looked pointedly at the shoe. He arched both eyebrows. He didn't know about the purchase or the gift. He just saw one small red shoe in the hands of his best operative, surrounding by debris and bodies, but no arrests and no information to lead to one. The shoe was probably all that was keeping Veld from busting a gut.

He held it so tight the new leather creaked and split. His grip was astonishing. He knew he wasn't big brother material. He had always known it, but for a brief sneeze of time, he had almost permitted himself to pretend.

He hadn't held her as she died. There hadn't been enough of her left. Handfuls only. Who could comfort a bit of intestine, a shred of lung, or one charred kidney? Her face was gone. He stared at the wreckage, trying to picture her before she faded and joined the other faceless masses of dead in his memory. Fields of bodies – men, women and children – spread across the back of his mind like a fungus. He recalled soldiers dangling from trees, or knelt at the base, their guts spilled out from ritual suicide when they knew the battle was already lost. There was no quarter there; no reasoning with someone willing to take their own life, and the lives of their loved ones.

_At least red doesn't show the blood so much_ , he thought distantly. The shoe with the price tag was missing. The kid hadn't had time to pull it off. You couldn't return only one shoe from a pair.

Veld was on guard. If Veld was ever afraid, he seemed it now. Or perhaps that was just his damaged eye. His eye-patch was gone, exposing the livid purple scars beneath He had fashioned a new patch out of torn fabric from his jacket. He had used his Phoenix Down. Veld would be pissed about their budget, too; the bottom line was sinking lower and lower, and Phoenix Down was expensive.

Veld said his name. he sounded like he was speaking from far away. Tinnitus as well? This day was getting better and better. He had gained a little sister and lost her again in a couple of hours. He had stepped over the bodies of his team, who had looked to him and his experience for guidance to keep them alive. All that, and he hadn't even traded balanced their deaths with the name of the crooked arms dealer. If he ever met that guy again, heads would roll – one in particular, and it wouldn't be his own.

Veld was insistent. The leather of the shoe squeaked as he grip tightened even further. The shoe was tacky now. Blood had dried between it and his palm. His bare hand stuck to the wretched memento. The kid deserved some kind of memorial, but like hell she'd get one. Nobody cared about street-kids in Midgar.

"I will not cry for the sake of my family," he said, searching his memory or something appropriately sentimental, like infantrymen in Wutai had said over their fallen comrades' freshly dug graves. "But instead … uh, mourn this day for their death."

Veld looked at him askance. It was clunky and mawkish, but it would do. Nobody ever said he was good with words. Nobody ever said he was good at anything, except killing, blowing shit up and striking fear into the hearts of his enemies with the mention of his name.

Yeah. And nobody was right, too.


	12. Elfé: Survivor

Felicia stumbled through the dust because there wasn't much else she could do. Going back was impossible; everyone was dead, and she had no stomach for looking at the burned bodies who used to be her friends and neighbours. Standing still was just plain stupid. After surviving the inferno that had destroyed Kalm, suicide by starvation wasn't high on her list. Going forward was her only option, so that was what she did. The incessant plodding, scrambling over rocks and out of gullies at least gave her something to concentrate on other than her misery.

The major problem was dehydration. She'd found water, but had nothing to carry it in except an old canteen her traumatised brain had somehow thought to grab when it realised nobody else was alive, and she wouldn't remain so for long if she didn't make tracks. It had been a wrench not to bury anyone, but she was a survivor. There had still been a few hours of good moonlight left. They'd have understood. Telling herself that helped a little.

She barely took in her surroundings anymore. What was the point? Despite her best efforts, the weight of grief had crept in and now made her feet heavy. Moving her legs was like walking on iron stilts, and about as smooth. She lurched more than walked, with only the harsh rasp of her own breathing echoing off the canyon walls.

Finally she trod on an uneven patch of ground, fell, and didn't get up again. She tried to move her arms but couldn't. Her legs kicked weakly, like a beached dolphin trying to get back into the water as the tide went out.

"Father," she murmured.

Of all the names she could've called, his was the most absurd. He hadn't ever come before when she needed him. He was too wedded to his fancy job in Midgar to care about his family back in Kalm. Why would now be any different? Maybe he would even be happy they were gone. Now he could concentrate on being a Shinra goon 24/7. She tried to shape her mother's name instead, but her lips cracked and became wet for the first time in hours – with blood.

"Whoa," said a voice as footsteps ran up. "Whoa man, what the … How the hell did _you_ get way out here?"

She didn't answer. Couldn't anymore. She must've blacked out. Later she could only remember snatches of what happened next – being carried in strong arms, someone putting a damp cloth to her forehead, a deep voice murmuring words she couldn't always make out.

"I'm not your father," it clearly replied once, and she realised she must have spoken, although she couldn't remember it. "Rest. You're safe here."

"Shinra," she croaked. "They came … I thought I'd get to see him, but … but then everything was burning, and he wasn't even there … wasn't …" She squeezed her eyes shut to keep in the traitorous tears. Her father was supposed to have been in the Shinra party who had come for some super secret mission they never told anyone the reason behind. Apparently the residents of Kalm weren't important enough to know what was going on in their own town – or why it had been annihilated.

"I knew it," said another voice.

"Peace, boy."

"But I knew it was Shinra that destroyed Kalm! The whole thing reeks of them. You know it too. It's just their style to get rid of whatever's in their way without any thought for –"

"I said peace. The child doesn't need to hear that sort of thing now."

Something pricked her arm. Felicia faded into unconsciousness, but she didn't forget what had been said. Shinra had burned her town. It had taken all her family, piece by piece, and left her with nothing. Even her childhood memories were tainted by them. It would have destroyed her too, if luck hadn't intervened.

"I hate them," she whispered. "I hate Shinra … so much …"

The younger of the two voices chuckled humourlessly. "She sounds like one of us."

"Be quiet."

"What? She's halfway to being part of AVALANCHE already."

"AVALANCHE," she murmured before darkness claimed her. She'd heard the name before. A two-bit eco-terrorist group with big ideas and a loathing for Shinra. Her father had told her about them. He hated them almost as much as they hated the company he worked for.

"We need to know what she saw, old man."

"You can ask her when she wakes. Maybe she'll be able to tell us who she is, too."

But when she did wake up, she woke up a different person, and refused to use the name her mother always said her father had chosen for her. Kalm was dead. Her mother was dead. Her father might as well have been, as far as she was concerned. And the girl known as Felicia was dead too. She'd died in the fire, just another name on the list of causalities whose bodies were too melted to tell one from another. Not that Shinra would try.

They had to pay. That level of callous destruction couldn't go unpunished. Felicia's own pain couldn't go unavenged.

Except that Felicia was dead, and probably couldn't have done anything anyway. She couldn't even make her father pay attention to her. How was she supposed to be able to do anything against a giant corporation like Shinra?

But AVALANCHE could. And they were more than willing to take in an amnesiac girl found wandering in Cosmo Canyon with nothing but a hatred of their enemy to call her own.

Goodbye frail little Felicia.

Long live Elfé.


	13. Veld: Boss

Veld came around slowly. The slowness told him more about the drugs swimming in his bloodstream than the jab of any needle. He always woke fast and completely. No time for shaking off drowsiness. You had to have good reflexes if you were a Turk.

Correction: you had to have good reflexes if you wanted to _survive_ as a Turk.

"Sir?"

Tseng's voice. A smidgen of Veld's tension eased.

He trusted Tseng almost as much as he trusted himself. The kid wasn't a rookie, but remained a little green in the way he could still be swayed too far by his own emotions. Still, he was getting over that, and he made for that imperfection with competence in all other areas. Tseng might as well have been born in a suit.

He had come a long way from the shivering stowaway Veld discovered on a transport back from Wutai several years earlier. Shinra policy stated he was supposed to report and take care of any security threats without hesitation, not necessarily in that order. He had killed before and had no compunction about following company orders. Even so, Veld had seen something in the boy's blood-encrusted eyes that stayed his hand – a mixture of defiance and pleading overlaid with the exhaustion of someone at the very end of their tether. Veld wasn't a bleeding heart. No sob story would stop him doing his job. It was the raw potential Veld had seen in him that had ultimately saved Tseng's life.

Veld never asked what had happened to Tseng that made him think hiding in a Shinra transport to get out of Wutai was a good idea. That kind of desperation always had a story behind it, but Veld didn't want to know it if it didn't affect aptitude to do the job, and Tseng had never volunteered the information. He could have been a spy. He could have been a suicide bomber, or a child assassin, or the Trojan carrier of a biological attack. Veld had still gone with his gut, rescued the scrawny kid, taken him under his wing and trained him as a Turk as soon as they reached Midgar. Tseng had repaid the action with a dedication and loyalty Veld wished he could bottle and make all his recruits drink.

Tseng had obviously been standing vigil over Veld while he was out cold. The sting of antiseptic hung in the air, alongside noises Veld associated with hospitals and medical facilities. His brain was sluggish, thoughts slow to arrive and muddled when they did.

He had been out of Midgar, he recalled, on some sort of mission. Search and destroy, that was it. Shinra had ordered he and a handpicked group of Turks to track and eliminate a spy they'd unearthed. The spy had absconded with several scraps of research from the science labs, plus research that could prove disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands. Of course Veld wasn't told what the research was of, but the delicacy of the operation needed a Turk touch rather than a platoon of steel-toed grunts and their guns.

He wouldn't dream of asking what had happened. Tseng knew that. He could read one of Veld's silences like a mission brief, and also knew how much he hated failure.

"Target acquired, sir," Tseng said in his usual clipped tones. "Mission objective achieved, but not without collateral damage."

"High level?" Veld's voice wasn't slurred, though the edges were roughened by a dry throat.

Tseng hesitated. That in itself was cause for alarm.

"Tseng?"

"You don't remember, sir?"

The gleam of metal. No, _bone_. Bone like metal, sticking out of … but that couldn't be right. The spy had been carrying phials of biological samples. One had shattered, and where it touched the man's arm the flash had bubbled … changed … morphed into something else. Veld had a flash of bony _erupting_ from the elbow in a curved spike, the wrist spiking outwards and the spine curving in a chorus of sickening cracks. The spy had screamed, writhing on the ground as the Turks cautiously approached, and then pulled something from a hidden jacket pocket.

"An incendiary device," Veld said now.

"A failsafe for if he was caught," Tseng replied. "He was working for an environmental terrorist group we're still working to identify."

"Kamikaze," Veld confirmed as his brain drip-fed him further details. Suddenly he felt cold all over, and it was nothing to do with the thin percale sheet covering him. His face was already slack, for which he was grateful. He didn't know if even his iron self-control would have been able to thwart the look of horror as he remembered where they'd tracked the spy – the reason they'd tackled him early instead of waiting for a better shot. Veld had been trying to prevent … prevent …

An incendiary device.

At the town limits.

"What was the damage to Kalm?"

Tseng didn't answer.

"Report, damn it!"

"The town was razed, sir."

Veld's tongue felt pinned by the weight of the question he had to ask. "Survivors?"

"We lost Berkeley from the unit, sir."

"Civilians?"

"No survivors, sir. Kalm was completely destroyed by the reaction of the device with the samples the target was carrying."

Veld heard him, but as if from far away. No survivors. His house was on the outskirts of town. That was what had made him react when he should have waited. He had wanted to keep that damn spy out of Kalm and so had decided to take him out on the road, in the open, instead of waiting for the clandestine opportunity usually favoured by the Turks. _He_ had ordered the shot that made the man drop his precious cargo. _He_ had ordered this to happen. In trying to protect his family, he had instead consigned them to death.

It was his fault. They were dead, and it was his fault.

Veld was the consummate professional. He was the very best at keeping his emotions under wraps and not letting them interfere with his job. Nonetheless, his eyes blurred with pain. Something was screaming inside his head, a high inhuman sound that had no beginning and no end, just the raw vibration of fresh grief.

He had a sudden vision of Felicia when she was a toddler. He couldn't remember exactly how old. That probably said a lot about him. He remembered the look of concentration on her chubby face, cheeks pink as she leaned forward, stuck her diapered bottom in the air and hand-walked herself onto her feet. She had wobbled as she took her first steps, hands outstretched, not holding onto anything. Then she'd stumbled and plopped back down, but instead of crying, like other children, or just smiling at her achievement, she had frowned and tried again. Not content to rest on her laurels, she hadn't stopped until she was so exhausted she just slumped onto her belly and went to sleep where she was, the way only babies and puppies could. Veld had scooped her up, cradling her in the crook of his arm and marvelling at how something so small and frail could be so strong.

"Just like her father," Emily had said, coming up beside him and leaning on his shoulder to stare down at their daughter. They were still at that stage back then, when touching each other had been as natural as breathing, and arguments were the exception rather than the norm. "He's obstinate as a mule too."

_I made this_. The thought had popped into Veld's head without warning or permission. _This little life._

Veld wasn't given to admiring the delicacy of baby's fingernails, cooing over tiny noses or toes the way some men did when they became fathers. It had never been his personality, even then. Despite that, the desire to protect his daughter and wife had crashed through him like cymbals. He would die to keep them safe. He would _kill_ to keep them safe. Felicia and Emily were his whole world back then. Everything he did, he'd done for them. Every boundary he'd crossed, every rule he'd broken, all the sacrifices had all been to keep them happy and healthy and _safe._

It felt like someone had sucked all the air from the room and stuffed his ears with cotton wool. How long had it been since he went home? How long since he saw Felicia, spent time with her like a father instead of a visiting stranger? How long since his side of the bed went cold? How long had be been promising himself he'd set things right as soon as work gave him the opportunity? There had always been something to take care of in the department, though; somecrisis or other demanding his attention, and he'd reasoned that they'd understand. It was all for their benefit anyway.

His thoughts twisted and writhed like a basket of overturned snakes. None of it showed in his face.

"Sir," Tseng broke in. "You should know that you were also injured in the blast."

"I was?" He didn't feel anything. Not even the tingle of a recent healing. Instinctively he felt out his muscles, searching for aches and pains and what they might tell him. It gave him something to focus on other than the screaming.

One arm was completely numb. Only when he tried to touch it with the other and felt the stump did he understand the true extent of his injuries. Of course. It would have to be something major to land him in here and render him unconscious for any substantial amount of time. If they'd had chance to check for survivors already, a substantial amount might be putting it mildly.

The shock of losing his arm didn't faze him as much as it might have half an hour earlier, however. Now it seemed more like divine retribution for all his mistakes.

"I want a full report."

Tseng stared at him. Since he was on his feet and Veld was in a bed it should have given Tseng more psychological height. It didn't. In years to come he would be able to emulate the trick, but right now he was still on the receiving end, and Veld managed to protect his dignity by erecting a wall of barbwire-topped aloofness. Tseng could see nothing of the rage and pain below his mentor's surface. He wouldn't learn for a long time the true extent of the Kalm disaster.

Tseng drew himself up and nodded. "Yes sir."

Veld returned the nod and watched him go, already thinking about what this meant for his workload. Prosthetics, perhaps? Or one of those new-fangled mechanical limbs. Something would have to be done if he was to get back into the field as soon as possible. Veld hated failure, especially in himself. Turks didn't linger over death. They were strong and the best at what they did. Rather than turn him against his job, his losses and failures as a husband and father made him retreat into what he was good at: being a Turk.

And Turks always got the job done.


	14. Tabitha: Mother

It was Kit who discovered Zack was missing. His shout brought Tabitha running, but she screeched to a halt in the doorway of her son's room.

The window was open, threadbare curtains billowing in the night breeze. Zack was a typically messy boy, always being told to pick up after himself and knock the dirt off his shoes before he came in the house. He never did. Consequently the footprint on the windowsill was clearly visible even from across the room.

"His backpack's gone," Kit said. He had his head in the cupboard. Tabitha briefly thought it strange that he'd gone straight there to check. Then she realised it wasn't strange at all. They'd always suspected Zack would leave someday. His personality and dreams were too big for a place like Gongaga. They'd just assumed they'd have a little longer before he went – and that he'd at least let them know he was going.

"The missing food," she murmured.

"What?"

"Some things were missing from the pantry. I thought I'd just mislaid them."

Kit's was distraught. He wasn't the type of man to keep his feelings off his face, and his forehead wrinkled like corduroy as he processed the full implications of these discoveries. "How much was missing?"

"Enough. How many clothes are gone?"

Kit hesitated before answering. "Enough."

"He's …" Tabitha swallowed. "He's not coming back this time."

Zack was ten the last time he ran away. He'd made it as far as the next village, camping out in the open and living off the land because he forgot to take the metal key needed to open the can of ham he'd pilfered from the pantry. That time he disturbed a Fire Snake's nest and would've lost his leg from infection if he hadn't been found. When asked what the hell he'd been trying to achieve, he'd replied that he was trying to get to Midgar, of course.

"Midgar?" Tabitha had echoed in bewilderment.

"Sure. To join SOLDIER. I'm gonna be a proper hero and get paid for it."

The fact he was only ten hadn't struck him as important until he had it pointed out to him – alongside the fact Shinra wouldn't even employ him as a delivery boy until he turned sixteen.

That was four years ago. Tabitha knew Zack could count. He was still too young, but that hadn't stopped him. Zack was resourceful and single-minded when he set his mind to something.

Tabitha realised she shouldn't have assumed they still had time to talk him out of going to Midgar, or at least enjoy him a little longer. Her little boy wasn't so little anymore, but he was still her baby. The urge to protect him was still strong, even though Zack hadn't needed her protection for a long time. She'd known he was bored, and that small-town life chafed against him like a badly fitting halter, but she'd still hoped …

"He'll probably lie about his age," she heard herself saying. "He has his heart set on SOLDIER."

"But why run away like this?" Kit insisted. "Did he think we'd try to stop him?"

"Would we have?"

He couldn't answer.

Tabitha bit her lip and stared at the bare floorboards. Gongaga wasn't a place for the young. It held no allure to someone who wasn't content to plod through life at a snail's pace. She and Kit loved it, though. They loved the quietness, the peace, even if they came at the price of any real future. 'Just go along to get along; could have been the town motto.

Maybe that was why Zack had vanished in the night instead of saying goodbye properly. He wouldn't have wanted to disappoint them, or insult the life they'd chosen just because it wasn't for him. He was an impulsive boy, but not a malicious one, and never prone to the kind of hormone-driven teenage temper tantrums Tabitha a dreaded from the day he hit puberty. Zack was built for adventure and old-fashioned principles like honour and Fighting the Good Fight – all things Gongaga had long-since forgotten about as it fell into age and decay.

None of which dulled the knife-sharp ache of loss she felt when she looked at the open window. She felt like the time a long-eared coyote-cat had come in and stolen her baby from his crib. She'd returned to find it halfway out the window she'd left open while she went to fetch Zack's bottle. The force with which she smacked the animal with the broom had run all the way up her arms and made her shoulders ache, but it had dropped Zack and run off yelping. Tabitha had scooped him up and vowed never to again leave him unattended in a room with an open window.

"He'll come back when he's ready," Kit said with the confidence of those in denial. "You'll see. This SOLDIER business is just some passing fad. When Shinra refuses to take him he'll be back. Then we can put a lock on the window and shut him in his room until he's thirty."

Tabitha said nothing. Not out loud, anyway.

 _Please be careful, Zack_ , she thought as she held back her tears. _Just please … until you find whatever it is you're looking for in life, please, please be careful._

"Tabitha?"

She swallowed. "Yes." Her voice came out a croak. "He'll be back someday."


	15. Legend: Avenger

seng was a good Turk, but he was too by-the-book. His voice over the comm-link had been fraught – amusingly so.

There was nothing amusing about this; nor about Liner. Liner was an overfed carcass of a man, devoid of morals while pretending he was a saint. He had changed his face and name, assumed a new identity and sheltered under Shinra' protection, but his voice was still the same.

The crumbling building they were inside gave the same resonance as a sewer tunnel. This time a rescue mission had brought them together, with Liner cast in the role of kidnap victim who needed saving. Last time he had been the crooked arms dealer laundering weapons to terrorists with no consideration beyond the bottom line. He could dress in fancy clothes and pretend he was a person of standing, but an asswipe was still an asswipe.

"Are you _insane_?" Liner demanded. "You were sent in here to rescue me from these clowns!" He gestured at the bodies on the floor. "Get me out of here – _now_!"

"You keep avoiding my question." He had kept his voice calm and as low as he could while remaining audible – more difficult than it seemed with the rumble of a collapsing building all around them. He stared at Liner with the intensity of a stalking cat. "Do you remember 1997?"

Tseng was probably having a hissy fit right now. They had been dispatched together to collect Liner, now a legitimate arms dealer, from a squad of mercenaries. He had gone into the danger zone to fetch liner out, leaving Tseng outside. The understanding was that he would defeat the enemy, rescue Liner and complete the mission ASAP, and Tseng would do all the paperwork – every damn piece, including the dry-cleaning bill for his suit. Instead, he had discovered a man he had sworn to get revenge on for years. The conflict of interests wasn't good. He was already on probation. Veld would not be pleased if he screwed up when he had only just been brought back onto the team after an extended 'leave of absence' on the Costa del Sol.

"Are you _trying_ to get us both killed?" Liner demanded. He still hadn't figured it out. Idiot.

"You could save your life by answering me."

A chunk of ceiling broke off. It landed between them. Debris flew everywhere. Linder screamed.

"Please! Please, let's just get out of here. I'll pay you. I'll do anything. I'll answer whatever you want later, but please, get me _out of here_!"

He curled his lip and backed away, towards the only exit. Liner's eyes widened in alarm, and then anger. The scars from that long-ago date with bombs in the enclosed space of a sewer stood out as his neck bulged and his skin reddened. The scars looked purple in the dim light.

"Get back here! Don't you dare leave me!" When he made no move to come back, Liner demanded, "Do Turks usually abandon their duty like this?"

He paused a moment, looking back at the guy. He could still fulfil his mission. He could still save Liner and save himself a lot of aggro. He almost went back – but he still remembered that leftover red shoe. He remembered holding it, still warm and wet with blood and the fire he had put out on the toe-ribbon. The charred ribbon had looked like a dead worm afterwards.

His resolve hardened. Liner had done that. He shouldn't care, but he did.

"Before the Turks realise what's happened, it'll be too late for them to do anything. Nobody is coming to save you."

"No!" Liner shrieked. "You can't leave me here! I'll die! You can't –"

"Do you remember 1997?"

"You bastard! Is that what this is about? You –"

"Do you remember 1997?"

"Whatever! Sure! I remember! Now save me, Turk!"

He narrowed his one good eye. "Right now, I'm not a Turk. I'm a debt-collector, and you got a balance due. You owe me for a crew of rookies and a kid sister." He shut the door behind him, sealing Liner in and sealing his own fate with the same deadbolt. He rapped his knuckles against the door as a goodbye. "I'm the Death God of the Battlefield, you piece of crap."

"No!" Liner shrieked. "No! NO! NOOOO!"

He left without flinching.

As expected, Tseng wasn't happy when he emerged without Liner. "What have you done? What have you –" He broke off to watch the building finally give up and collapse, burying everything and everyone inside. "You just _left_ him?"

He breezed past Tseng. He didn't need to see it. "Tell Veld I'll take whatever punishment's coming my way. And tell him I don't regret a damn thing."


	16. Dala: Protector

Dala Strife wrung her hands and fussed with Cloud's hair for the umpteenth time.

"Mo-om," he hissed. "Quit it! I'm not a baby."

"I know _that_. Babies don't go off to Midgar on their own."

Whatever he said, he was still her baby in her heart. Cloud was sixteen years old and already showing muscle definition from the severe training he put himself through. He had convinced Tifa to teach him some things while they were still able to spend time together. After her father banned him from their house, he had continued to practise what he had learned. His thick coat disguised the difference those long hours had made to his physique, but Dala knew her little boy was growing up. Yet when she looked at him she still saw a tiny baby with a tuft of blond hair that stayed resolutely solo until he was over a year old. She remembered tying that tuft with a pale blue silky ribbon, which he had fallen asleep clutching every time he pulled it off. Cloud hated to see his baby pictures as much as Dala loved them – photographs of a past life, when she still had a husband and could tie her son's hair up without him complaining.

Cloud had inherited his father's colouring and tendency towards a slender build. The other boys leaving for Midgar this year were far more muscular. Cloud wasn't the shortest boy in town, and now he definitely wasn't a weakling, but next to the others he looked almost fey. His startling blue eyes only enhanced the impression. It was easy to tell his father had been a foreigner. Cloud had inherited things from his mother's side too, including a tolerance for the cold – something his father never achieved. That flaw had killed him when he tried and failed to gain Nibelheim's acceptance by taking stupid risks in a blizzard.

Dala shook away the unpleasant thoughts. There was enough unpleasantness today. Cloud was leaving for Midgar, of all places. She worried about him. Any mother would, but she had always been extra protective of her boy. Maybe she shouldn't' have coddled him, but she couldn't change that now.

"You're sure you have –"

"Yes, Mom," Cloud snapped. "Whatever it is, I have it, I've done it, I've taken care of it, or I've seen to it. I'm fine. The transport's going to leave without me!"

"Don't be moody with me, young man. You're not too old to put across my knee." Dala's face softened. "I'm not going to see you for a long time. At least let me draw out these last awkward seconds until we're both uncomfortable."

Cloud thrust his hands deep in his pockets. "You're so sentimental, Mom."

She took a measuring look at him. Then she nodded, just once. "You'll do." Pressing her hand against his shoulder, she turned him around and placed a boot against his backside. He stumbled forward when she straightened her knee. "Now get out there and follow those dreams of yours."

_Wherever they take you. Even away from me._

Her throat closed. She felt like she had swallowed a mouthful of syrup.

Cloud looked back. Dala made shooing motions with her hands. He smiled and jogged away, looking back over his shoulder at her waving. He had gone no more than five feet when he cannoned into a burly boy also headed for the transport.

"Watch it, twerp," the boy barked. Then he did a double take. " _You?_ You're going to _Midgar_?"

Cloud hesitated but squared his shoulders. "Yeah. I'm joining Shinra."

The other boy gaped. "As what, a moving target for the rest of us to practise on?"

Cloud flushed. Dala felt the urge to march over and smack the other boy, but restrained herself. Cloud was right; he wasn't a baby anymore. He had to learn to fight his own battles now – and also when _not_ to use his fists. Her coddling had made him extra sensitive about being seen as weak, which had landed him in hot water here in Nibelheim. It was time for them both to do things differently now.

"I'm going to be in SOLDIER," Cloud said, pride and defiance in his voice.

The other boy snorted. "Yeah, right. Only if they start taking in skinny little twerps for the enemy to waste their bullets on."

Cloud's face darkened with extreme dislike. "Screw you, Luxiere." He glanced back at Dala, as if suddenly remembering she was there. Dala gave a smaller wave, fingers crimping when he turned away. "You watch, Luxiere. I'm gonna be in SOLDIER while you mop floors and empty garbage. You'll see."

She watched as her little boy was loaded into the transport and taken away from her. She felt a mixture of pleasure and worry, plus the ever-present concern of every mother that their child might run into difficulties they couldn't handle. Even when your children were old enough to take care of themselves, they never stopped being the damp little babies you first held and promised to protect until your dying breath.

Yet that when Dala's dying breath came, it was full of smoke and searing heat, and her son was nowhere in sight. She knew, as her burning house crashed down around her, that she had failed in her basic duty. After a long absence, Cloud had finally returned to Nibelheim and visited her, telling her how embarrassed he was not to be higher in Shinra after all his boasting. He had been too ashamed to write or come home until now, when his mission demanded he come here. She had reassured him, told him she loved him, and sent him out tonight to visit Tifa and tell her the truth too. He had hemmed and hawed, but eventually gone. Her last sight of him had been his back as he trudged down the street like a convicted man walking to the gallows.

It twisted Dala's heart and made her vision blur with tears that instantly evaporated. Cloud had been outside when that monster, Sephiroth, set light to the village. He had cut down anyone who ran into the street. Cloud was outside because of her. He was a good boy; he would have gone to confront someone hurting his village. He was probably dead now, and it was her fault. Dala hadn't kept her little boy safe. She should have grabbed him before he got on that damned transport. She should have held tight and refused to let him go. Instead, she had sent him into even greater danger than if he had mimicked his father and gone hunting Acid Dragons on Mount Nibel. The worst thing she had ever done was let go of them.

She searched groggily for a way out. Her house had become an inferno. She was dizzy and disoriented. Her head ached and her lungs prickled like they were bleeding inside from all her coughing. Dala fell to her knees, her vision so blurred she never even saw the roof beam that broke off and crushed her.


	17. Aerith: Little Girl Lost

Aerith couldn't see her mom anymore. The crowd was too thick and she was too short. People knocked aside the small girl without even seeing her. Her elbow banged off a drainpipe until she hooked it through and clung on like a piece of flotsam in a fast-moving river.

"Mommy?"

A woman looked down at her without stopping. A man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with old newspapers nearly rolled over her foot. Two teenage boys thought it was funny to yank her ponytail as they passed. It hurt enough to bring tears to Aerith's eyes. She retreated into the shadows of the alley behind her. She knew she shouldn't; she should be trying to get back to the market. Her mother couldn't afford a stall, but she had set up on the corner to sell her crochet and knitting. Before she became absorbed in bartering with stingy customers, she had warned Aerith not to go out of sight.

"We'll call in someplace nice on our way home if you watch our bags and make sure nobody steals them while I'm working."

Aerith honestly meant to follow her mother's instructions to the letter. It was just that when she saw the man selling balloons, she took a few steps out of line to see the giant bumblebee. You didn't get bees in the slums. The only ones she had ever seen were in books, where they had fascinated her alongside pictures of brightly coloured flowers and lush green meadows. In an instant she had been caught up in the crowd, too small and light to fight her way back against the flow of people. She had called out to her mother, but men at the iron-ware stall yelling for customers, women at the food stalls yelling for customers, and customers just plain yelling, had all absorbed her voice like a single raindrop blending into a downpour.

The backs of Aerith's eyes prickled. She blinked rapidly. She wouldn't cry. This was nothing. She was ten now and ten year olds didn't cry just because they were stupid enough to get lost at market. Besides, she wasn't even properly lost – she could see the marketplace, she just couldn't get to it from here. She would just find another way back and hope her mom didn't notice she had been gone, and that nobody stole anything in the meantime. What had they brought with them today? She patted her pocket and found her house-key still there. She didn't own a purse and her mom kept money in a little lockbox while she was trading. Was there anything more valuable for thieves to get at?

The alleyways in this Sector were a maze, and deadly to the unwary. Aerith avoided them out of habit. Her mother preferred to keep her inside as much as possible, so there was no chance of Shinra happening across her by accident and whisking her away. If Aerith did go out, it was to places with lots of witnesses, and always where her mom could keep an eye on her. Her mom even walked her to school and collected her from the gates at the end of the day, which she had done for the entire year she had even allowed Aerith to attend. It was a big deal for them to go to market together. A slip up like this could cost her any future trips out. Aerith's desire to get back fast outweighed her dislike of the alleys, so she cut through the one behind her and turned left. If she kept turning left she would eventually find her way back to where she started. It was only logical. It couldn't be that far.

Tall buildings loomed like menacing, bent-backed old men. Aerith shook her head; that was just her imagination talking. When she came to the end of the alley she turned left, and then left again. The sounds of the market faded. She frowned and stopped to get her bearings. Should she go back? The first stirrings of panic tickled her tummy. Maybe she should try to get home instead of wandering around here. She knew her way home from the market, and even being yelled at and grounded would be better than getting lost forever in this warren.

She retraced her steps, listening for the sounds of people, but when she had made two right turns she still didn't hear them. She stopped again and looked up at the criss-crossed washing lines. None of the laundered sheets or clothes billowed. There was no breeze down here. Instead, people relied on the hot, trapped air to dry things. Droplets from the still-wet fabric dripped on her upturned face. She hadn't walked under any washing lines before.

"Where am I?" The panic in her tummy crept up her throat into her voice. She balled her fists. "Stop that. You obviously went past the turning by accident. Just go back and find it again. Simple enough."

She did go back. And then she went back the other way. She crossed under the same washing lines five times – assuming they _were_ the same lines. Hadn't there been a red bandana tied to one before? Or was it a yellow baby's bonnet? The only colour she could see was a blanket with a suspicious brown stain.

Aerith felt like the city was laughing at her. The boys at school sometimes hid under the industrial wreckage at the end of the schoolyard, which nobody had ever cleared away when the authorities shut down the factory next door. The boys brought torches and told horror stories in the near-pitch blackness, until the bell sent them scurrying back to class. Aerith had only been allowed in once. You had to have an invitation to get into the cramped space. One boy had told a story of monsters that lived in the backstreets of the Midgar slums; creatures that had once been people, until they got so hopelessly lost they reverted to savages to survive. He told how they ate rats and cats, and then cannibalised each other when they grew too weak to catch the swift-footed little creatures. The pictures he painted of mouths crusted with dried blood, matted hair and moans from people who knew they had lost their humanity had made Aerith's flesh crawl. It was all utter garbage, but with the yellow light of a torch under his chin, he had sounded convincing.

Sounds from a cluster of trash cans made her freeze. She backed away when one lid fell off and rolled towards her. Something rose out of the can, moaning. It reached out blindly, something gooey dripping off its long fingers. It was too dark to see, but Aerith imagined blood, thick and dark. A sudden memory rose inside her – not something from a schoolboy story, but an actual memory. Red blood on a purple dress, a train hooting so loud it hurt her ears, someone gripping her hand and then going limp, before her mom gathered her up like she was made of glass and might break at any moment. It wasn't a memory she allowed herself to think about very often. Usually it came when she was asleep and couldn't stop it. This time I loomed in her mind as the man loomed at her in reality. Aerith screamed and ran.

"Wha?" the figure said blearily. "Ow, my head. Huh? Hey, kid! Come back! I won't hurt ya!"

She kept running. She may be a whole ten years old, but she was alone and scared. She skidded on something slimy and crashed into a wall, but she kept running. Her shoulder ached, but she kept running. Her boots were covered in smelly, awful things, but she kept running. A window banged open above her and a head poked out, but she kept running. Someone yelled for her to stop, but she kept running and running and running. She just wanted her mom. She wanted her to gather her up and take her home, and she would never leave the house again, if only she could see her mom again –

She flew out of another anonymous alley like a bullet from a gun – and stopped. This one didn't lead into another backstreet. Instead, it bordered what looked like a town square after a nuclear holocaust. As if the open space wasn't amazing enough, at its centre was the biggest building Aerith had ever seen. Giant spires thrust upwards towards the Plate as if someone had read fairytales about Rapunzel, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and decided to replicate their towers in real life. Or perhaps they had been planning to use them to climb up to the world above. Either way, the project had been abandoned a long time ago. The place was in terrible disrepair; graffiti covered the walls, the gargoyles guarding the corners were headless, holes glared through the roof and smog had blackened the walls until they looked burnt. Three wooden planks were nailed across the entrance, but even those were beginning to splinter and warp. It was a dreadful and ugly scene – but also the most beautiful Aerith had ever seen.

She didn't know what made it beautiful, but something made her want to keep looking. Almost without her control, her feet took her forward. The planks were high, leaving just enough room for a short girl to pass underneath if she crouched. The doors were heavy and studded with metal rivets, but the left one didn't sit right. There was a tiny gap where the edges refused to line up. Aerith glanced behind her at the maze-like streets and slipped inside.

If the outside was ugly, inside was catastrophic. It looked like a mob had run rampant, breaking and tearing things up everywhere. Large benches were still attached to the floor in rows, but they were covered in debris and dust. A wooden stand with some sort of bowl in its centre had been overturned. Another elaborately carved stand lay twisted at the front of the room. This one had obviously held a large book, judging by the curling yellow pages scattered everywhere. Shattered roof tiles lay at odd intervals, usually below the holes in the ceiling. Nobody had been in here for a long time. When Aerith looked behind her at the door, she saw only her own footprints in dust that was at least an inch thick.

"What is this place?" she said out loud. Her voice seemed smaller than ever in here. She had never even heard of a place like this. Maybe it was so old and disused, everyone had forgotten about it.

The front of the room had a table with a tarnished metal plaque on its side. Aerith crouched beside it, brushing her hand over the letters and reading them without difficulty. Unlike many kids at school, who thought academia was impractical preparation for life in the slums, Aerith had always valued learning for the sake of it. She wanted to know more about the world. Perhaps it was a self-destructive thing; some throwback that made her want to know exactly what she was missing out there, in the world she would probably never see. She ate up what her mother could teach her and held tight to whatever she got out of school, aware that at any moment she could be removed 'for her own safety'.

"Church of the Good Shepherd," she read softly. There were numbers she presumed were dates for when it had been built and who had laid the founding stones, but nothing to signify when it had stopped being used.

She had been in chapels before, but nothing this ornate. People scrimping for scraps rarely splashed out on flashy places to pray, she had found, and religion wasn't common below the Plate. Mostly people seemed to subscribe to the idea that if there was a god, or goddess, or some big power in charge of the universe, it would have given them a way out of their terrible lives instead of dumping them here at birth and ripping them away again in painful, humiliating deaths. If they did believe, it was mostly just so they had something to blame.

Aerith looked around. This wasn't just disused; this place had been trashed. "What happened here?"

The old stones didn't reply. She didn't expect them to. She walked along the row of pews, running her hands over the carvings. She knew she should be trying to find her way back to the market, but the thought of venturing into those backstreets again made her shudder. She sat down, put her head in her hands and tried not to cry. The hushed atmosphere made any sniffles impossibly loud. It was nice and peaceful in here, and she felt a lot safer than she had outside, but thinking of her mom made Aerith want her all the more.

"Hey, kid?"

She fell off the pew and whirled. Concentrating on not crying had left her unaware that someone else had entered the church. The man who had risen out of the garbage like a cannibal-spectre stood a few feet away. He had his palms raised. His hair was in disarray under a red bobble hat and he had a beard like barbed wire, but his voice was soft and his eyes, when she met them, were kind.

"Don't worry," he reassured her. "I ain't gonna hurt ya. You dang near scared the crap outta me when you screamed an' ran off like that." He patted his backside. "Literally. I thought you was hurt or summat." He regarded her with concern. "You ain't hurt, are ya?"

Slowly she shook her head.

"Good." He peered again, as if he needed glasses to see distances but didn't have any. "You're dressed too dang nice for this neighbourhood. You lost?"

She considered lying. A funny feeling made her stop before she opened her mouth to give voice to the lie. In the end she nodded. "I need to get to the market," she murmured. Why was she telling him? Never talk to strangers, her mom had said. Strangers could easily be Shinra goons waiting for an opportunity to grab her.

The man nodded. "Thought it might be summat like that. Lil' thing like you shouldn't be around this neighbourhood. Bad stuff happens around here – stuff you don't want any part of, sweetie. Now, you ain't got no reason to trust me, but if you like, I could take you back to the market. I ain't got much call to go there myself, but I k now where it's at." He shrugged, like it was no bother if she said no, but flickers across his eyes told her he would be hurt. This was a man who was used to being disregarded by everyone. His offer was made with a kindness he had rarely been shown in life.

It was one of those sudden revelations Aerith sometimes got about people but could never explain. It started as a tickle in the bottom of her brain, above the roof of her mouth. Sometimes it made her want to cough, but today her nose also tingled, and not from his stench. The tingly thought rose into the centre of her mind, where it refused to be ignored. He was a good man. He was a trustworthy man, too, if she would show him a little trust so he could prove himself.

"I … I'd like that," she said, a little frightened of herself. She always was when thoughts like that appeared. Where did they come from? Her mom always went shifty-eyed when she mentioned them, so she didn't mention them very often. Life was simpler that way, if less reassuring.

The man nodded nonchalantly, but his shoulders lost some of their tension. "The name's Joe. Used to be Joe Bailey; sometimes it's Joe Hobo, but generally it's just Joe." He rubbed his hand on his coat. Aerith saw that what she had thought were bloodstains were in fact oil. His hands were black with it and whatever else had been leaking out of the garbage that had made his bed. He reeked of old beer and something cabbage-y; the stale smells of someone who had no bathed in a long, long, _long_ time. She had been terrified of him before, and should still be, but like the ugly old church she somehow wasn't. In the light, Joe was just a man. He glowed with good intentions the way Aerith's mom had on a train platform a long time ago.

Aerith stepped forward without fear, resolving to come back to this church when her mom had finished grounding her. "Hello, Joe. My name's Aerith."


	18. Zack: Rebel

Zack tried not to look intimidated. It was difficult. Mostly he looked like he was about to burst out laughing, which would have been totally inappropriate, given the circumstances. He had a bad habit of laughing when he was nervous.

"So," said the tall man who had owned the room five seconds after he entered it. "You're the infamous Zack Fair."

Zack stared straight ahead. If he focussed on the bricks, maybe he would look less like he was about to pass one of them. "Sir. Yes, sir."

"At ease, cadet. You're not in the field now." The taller man raised his eyebrows. "Not that being out there seems to make much difference to you."

Zack's heart, currently swimming around in his stomach, plummeted into his boots. "Sir." If in doubt, show respect. That was what the recruitment officer had said when he escorted Zack's batch of wide-eyed newbies through the network of Shinra corridors on their first day. Zack now knew the route had been deliberately circuitous, taking them past labs, boardrooms and display cases filled with trophies and photos of brave men receiving medals. The route had probably been mapped out to daunt them, so officers could judge their reaction to the enormity of Shinra behind one-way mirrors in the main hall.

Half of those newbies had fallen at the first hurdle. More had left Shinra before getting off the lowest rung of training. Now those who had stuck it out were nearing the decision-making stage, where they needed to either stick with regular military work, specialise in a field to progress to officer level, or find sponsors for the SOLDIER programme. Zack had always known the third option was for him – at least until now. Right now his future wasn't looking so rosy.

"Your scores are all very high," said the man.

"Sir."

"Exceptionally high, in fact."

"Sir."

"Your record has been exemplary up to now. A couple of side-notes about overconfidence, but nothing truly unfavourable."

"Sir."

"So what changed?"

Zack swallowed. The lump stayed lodged in his throat. He had a feeling like being at the edge of a sheer cliff, above a canyon of spikes, balanced on a rapidly crumbling ledge. "Sir, circumstances were not optimal for following orders to the letter, sir. I took the initiative, sir."

"Rookies aren't supposed to take the initiative, cadet."

"In retrospect I can see that, sir, but –" Zack weighed his words. _Screw it_ , he thought. _I'm probably about to be kicked out anyway. Or court martialled. Either way, what can telling the truth hurt now?_ "It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," the man deadpanned. He consulted his paperwork. "Hitting your commanding officer over the head, ordering your fellow recruits around in his place, requisitioning firearms you were not yet qualified to carry and using some … interesting but unauthorised weapons of your own creation; all that seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"Yes, sir. Although, to be fair, Captain Wesson knocked himself out."

"That's not what it says in his report."

"Sir, if I may speak freely, Captain Wesson is a very proud man. I don't think he's eager for it to get around that he turned around to march dramatically away from me and walked into the open door of his truck, sir. Especially since he was the one who left it open when he jumped out to yell at me, sir."

"He had to have fourteen stitches in his head."

"It was supposed to be a very dramatic exit, sir."

"I see. And the firearms?"

"We were in sand-wyrm country, sir, and we had received several reports of sightings in the area. As you know, sir, sand-wyrms are vicious and, unlike flighted dragons, often attack unprovoked. In the absence of the Captain, we needed to defend ourselves, and I had prior experience with sand-wyrms. They used to live in the canyons near my home village, so I was the most experienced of our unit. I figured I had the best chance of getting everyone out of there in one piece, sir."

"And the Lieutenant?"

"He hadn't accompanied us, sir. He had, uh, bowel trouble before we left Shinra." Something about bad shrimp from the cafeteria. Zack had tried their seafood once and sworn never to try it again. Ever. "Since it was only supposed to be practise manoeuvres, the Captain thought we could manage without anyone as his second in command."

"So you decided you were the best of the job."

"Actually, sir, the other recruits picked me after I, uh, took care of a sand-wyrm that attacked the Captain's vehicle."

"Took care of?"

"Sir, I was riding in our food supply truck. I grabbed some flour and other supplies, mixed them in a coffee tin and threw it at the enemy, sir."

"Ah, a homemade explosive. Impressive, if unorthodox and highly unsanctioned. Couldn't you just shoot the thing?"

"Sir, to take down a sand-wyrm with a regular firearm you would have to be standing on its head with your gun jammed into one of its eyeballs, sir. Explosives are marginally more effective. I got lucky when I threw mine right into its open mouth."

"Now I see where the unauthorised weapons come into it."

"Actually, sir, that might be referring to the Hoopla Cactus Bombs. They came afterwards."

"Excuse me?"

"I spotted some Hoopla Cacti at the side of the road. Their interior is highly flammable, especially if mixed with strong acid, such as sand-wyrm venom. We extracted the teeth of the dead worm and cut down the cacti in case we were attacked again en route, since I'd used all the relevant kitchen supplies. We made shallow cuts in the cactus limbs so we could push the teeth into them before throwing the bombs at any attacking worms, sir. The time lag for the venom squeezing out was enough that we weren't blown up before they hit their targets. After that it was mostly just luck that got us home intact. Uh, sir."

For a long moment the man just stared at him. Zack stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind his back. If he had moved, his cuffs would have jingled. Rather than be hailed as a hero, he had been disarmed and taken into custody when they arrived back in Midgar. Apparently Captain Wesson had recovered enough to radio ahead and warn the authorities of their arrival.

"You are really something, Cadet Fair."

"Sir, that doesn't sound like such a good thing, sir." Zack attempted once again to swallow the lump. Once again it refused to leave. Instead, it rose to pulse against the backs of his eyes too.

Everything was going down the toilet. Maybe he should have just let the giant, razor-fanged, iron-skinned sand-wyrms eat him back in the friggin' desert. He sure couldn't go home after this. He had promised himself he would contact his parents as soon as he graduated from basic training and got onto the SOLDIER programme. Anything less, after what he had put them through, would have been unacceptable.

The man sighed and circled a finger, gesturing for Zack to turn around. Zack assumed he was going back into his cell. Instead, he felt his cuffs being removed.

"Sir?"

"You applied for the SOLDIER programme, didn't you?"

"Uh, yes sir?"

"Took the test and aced it."

"I didn't actually know that, sir."

"Well you do now." The man physically turned Zack to face him. "It said on your record that all you needed was a sponsor. Up to now, folks were lining up to fill that role."

"That 'up to now' suggests they aren't anymore, sir."

The man shrugged. "You only need one." He stuck out his hand. "I've never actually sponsored anyone before. Never saw myself as mentor material, but you … you really are something else, Cadet Fair."

Zack stared at the proffered hand, then at the man's face. The man's serious mouth was curved into a slight smile. "You mean you're not kicking me out?"

"SOLDIER isn't just about following orders. It's about staying true to your prime directives: protect those weaker than you, defend those who can't defend themselves, and preserve your honour in all you do. You acted honourably, if rashly. You were willing to sacrifice your own career to make sure your comrades got home safely when a situation turned unexpectedly sour. Like those grapes Captain Wesson is carrying right now, after I told him I was going to sponsor you."

Zack continued to stare.

"It's customary to shake someone's hand in a situation like this."

"Uh, yes! Sir! Yes, sir!" Zack clasped the hand and shook it enthusiastically. "Thank you, sir!"

"One thing, though."

"Sir?"

"Stop calling me 'sir'. The name's Angeal."


	19. Kunsel: Casualty

"No!"

The stink of burnt flesh and something more acrid was overpowering. Zack hurtled across the open ground, sword flashing red. He didn't even consider that there may be more monsters lurking behind the rocks. He didn't think that he wasn't strong enough to defeat it alone. All he saw was the one towering over the fallen figure.

"Zack!" he heard Angeal yell.

For once, he ignored his mentor. He had to get there in time. He had to –

"Zack, get down!"

Something in Angeal's order got through. Zack hit the dirt. Milliseconds after he did, a blast of fire magic detonated and swept over his head, incinerating the monster he had been heading towards. The escaped experiment shrieked, but the sound died quickly. The air crackled, the smell even thicker than before. Zack leapt to his feet and covered the last bit of distance.

He dropped to his knees, heedless of the sticky mess staining his pants. Bits of flambéed monster stuck to the fabric, staining it green and black. Sheathing his sword in the harness on his back, Zack cradled the fallen figure.

"Kunsel?" he enunciated like it would help. "Can you hear me?"

Kunsel groaned. He was alive, but barely. His face was a mess of green slime and red flesh. The skin across his forehead actually bubbled. His ribcage had been caved in when the monster kicked him with one powerful hind leg. Whatever Hojo had made the thing for, Zack didn't know and didn't care. He didn't care that his orders had been to bring it in alive. He didn't care that both he and Angeal were going to be in big trouble for disobeying. He _did_ care that a squadron of Third Class SOLDIERs had been sent out to bring it in and were now scattered in pieces across the desert. He _did_ care that Hojo was going to care more about his damn experiment than the lives of those men. He _did_ care that his friend was dying in his arms because he and Angel hadn't been dispatched in time to salvage the situation the moment it went south.

Zack was aware of someone coming up behind him. He turned his head. "Angeal?"

Angeal's expression was grim. "Do you have your Phoenix Down?" They were each issued with a single magical healing feather. SOLDIERs were preternaturally disposed towards fast healing, but they still required time. Sometimes, out in the field, that just wasn't an option. Angeal had already used his today when Zack saw what was happening to the Third Classes, ran in without thinking, and got his belly opened as payment for letting his emotions dictate his actions.

Zack nodded and fumbled in his pouch. He slapped the feather onto Kunsel's skin and willed it to sink in. Phoenix Down was only absorbed when there was still a chance the recipient would survive. For a moment nothing happened. Zack's heart seized up. Then, thankfully, the feather melted and Kunsel's entire body glowed with golden light. It made Zack's hands tingle through his leather gloves. When it faded, Kunsel's chest was the correct shape and his left arm no longer bent at an unnatural angle. The skin was still stained where bone had poked through only moments before. A patch of pink scar tissue was the only indicator of the horrific injury. Most of Kunsel's face was whole, too, but as with his arm, the magic had not totally healed him. All around his eyes and from his forehead into his hairline, Kunsel's skin was pockmarked and reddened with new scars. The experiment's acidic blood had left its mark; almost like it was flipping Zack's the bird from beyond the grave.

"How?" Zack ground out. "How could that thing get loose? How did this happen?"

"Come on," Angeal said without answering his questions. "We have to check for more survivors." He didn't invest much conviction in his tone. You just had to look at the blood-soaked dirt to know there weren't any more. "I'll radio for a chopper to fetch this Third Class."

"His name," Zack said, "is Kunsel." He shut his eyes against the sight of Kunsel's destroyed face. "And he's my friend."

At that moment, Zack made a promise that would echo down the years, influencing his actions for the rest of his life. He resolved that he would never again let anything so devastating happen to someone he cared about. If he was able to stop it, he would, no matter what. Even if the consequences for himself were dire, he couldn't deal with feeling like this: like he had betrayed the central tenets of being a SOLDIER; like he had failed.

 _I promise,_ he thought fiercely. _Never again. Never, ever again._


	20. Elmyra: Momma Bear

Elmyra knew Aerith was seeing someone long before her daughter actually admitted it. Though she hadn't actually given birth, long years of playing the role meant Elmyra had developed the intuition of a mother. You couldn't fool your mom about stuff like that. Every teenager in the history of the universe thinks they can put one over on their parents, but they're always wrong, and Aerith was no exception. Yet rather than confront her and possible start an argument that didn't need to be started, Elmyra decided to wait. Aerith would tell her in time, she was sure.

Her protective instincts sharpened, however, when Aerith continued to hide his existence. Any boy she didn't feel able to admit to could not be one who was good for her. Aerith had never been into the whole 'bad boy' thing, like some girls her age. Girls like that just wanted the thrill of being wild for a while, before retreating back into their boring lives. Those who didn't retreat didn't tend to last long. In the slums 'bad boys' ranged from petty thieves to full-out drug dealers and gangbangers. Though she couldn't imagine her daughter with anyone like that, Aerith's caginess was new and Elmyra didn't like it.

There was nothing else for it. She poked and prodded, until 'Yes, Mom, I have a boyfriend!' rang through their little house.

"Invite him to dinner sometimes, sweetheart." _So I can vet him and see if he's worth even half of you._

"He's not really the come-to-dinner type, Mom."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?" _Please not some tattooed gang member. PLEASE not some tattooed gang member._

"He's … nice," Aerith said evasively. "But his job doesn't give him much free time."

"So he's too good to eat dinner with us during that precious free time?"

"It's complicated."

"Simplify it for me."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"You'll get mad."

"Have I ever gotten mad over who you date?"

"Mom, you can count the boys I've dated on one hand – and you don't even need to use all the fingers."

Elmyra couldn't deny she was a little pleased Aerith's dating record was so sparse. With Turks periodically knocking on their door, trying to coerce her to accompany them back to Shinra, Aerith's single status was partly because few young men wanted to risk the company's wrath by giving her a reason to stay if they wanted her to go. Jiro and Shotaro, the two boys who had asked her out anyway, hadn't understood Aerith's quirky ways and dropped her like a hot coal when she wouldn't sleep with them. Elmyra had been so proud, but then divided over Aerith's reason why.

"I'm saving myself for the one I love," she said blithely, with the aplomb of someone who has heard and read hundreds of romantic stories and fairytales, but had no experience of a real relationship and how difficult it could be.

"Not marriage?" Elmyra said hopefully.

Aerith considered this, head tilted to one side like a puppy contemplating a particular high step between it and its food bowl. "I supposed I'll end up marrying the one I love, so sure, marriage too."

"And you didn't love either of those boys?"

"Ick, Mom! Jiro's hands were like waterfalls with all that sweat, and Shotaro kept telling me how great he is because his dad works for the company trash collectors and you just have a market stall."

Elmyra kept up her requests for Aerith's boyfriend to join them for dinner, or just visit, or stop by sometime – anything to get him into her line of sight so she could assess him. She saw Aerith going about dreamy-eyed and daydreaming more and more – not her usual daydreams, which could turn into waking nightmares, but the kind of doe-eyed teenage fantasising Elmyra used to do when she first met her husband. Things were getting desperate: she _needed_ to meet this boy, and soon!

Once his identity came out, however, part of her wished she was still in the dark.

"Mom?" Aerith said to her one day, standing in the doorway and scuffing her feet like she expected to be told off. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, sweetheart." Elmyra set aside her mending and gave her daughter her full attention.

"Can … my boyfriend … can he, um …" Aerith took a breath as if for strength. Elmyra realised with alarm that she had been crying. "Someone really close to him just died and he's not coping very well. Can he, um, come over and stay for the weekend? I don't want him to be on his own right now. I'm … I'm a bit scared he might … do something. Something stupid."

Elmyra heart swelled with pride. "Certainly, he can stay. Poor thing. When would he arrive?"

Aerith dipped her head. "He's waiting outside."

Not letting her smile slip, Elmyra nodded. She got to her feet, brushed off her skirts and wished they didn't have to boil water on the stove to pour into a tin tub when they wanted a bath. It was so much effort she usually opted for a standing-up scrub with a sponge and some carbolic soap, which did the trick when you were working, but not when you were meeting your daughter's beau for the first time. Her hair felt stringy, her skin sallow and slick with grease. She fixed the wisps of hair that had worked loose from her bun and went into the kitchen while Aerith fetched him inside.

Elmyra's eyes nearly fell out of her head. He was tall, with a shock of black hair and shoulders like a bodybuilder. Scabs from a pair of cuts crisscrossed his cheek, but didn't dent his good looks in the slightest. His features were even, his eyes electric blue, and he had a soft mouth that was pressed into a sad downturn. What caught her attention most, however, was his SOLDIER uniform.

"Mom." Aerith appeared from behind him, her eyes pleading. "This is Zack. Zack, this is my mom."

"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Gainsborough." He offered one gloved hand. His tone was polite but exhausted.

Elmyra stared at the proffered hand. She couldn't take it. What was Aerith thinking, bringing someone like this into their home? No wonder she had been cagey. This was worse than if she was dating a Turk. It was worse than if she had accepted that Tseng man's advances. This was a SOLDIER – one of Shinra's fearsome guard dogs. These men hunted monsters for a living! No wonder he was freakishly muscular. The rumours of SOLDIERs that circulated the sectors usually included magic and stories of drugs than made them stronger than an entire tug-o-war team and twice as aggressive.

Except that Zack wasn't aggressive at all. His eyes were rimmed red, the skin below them puffy. He had been crying too, and a lot more than Aerith. His massive shoulders were slumped. Everything about him yelled 'I am hurting' but also 'I don't want to harm anyone'. Despite his build, he couldn't be much older than Aerith. For some reason, Elmyra had always thought of SOLDIERs as ageless creatures dedicated to wholesale slaughter. Replace that uniform with civvies and this Zack boy was just that: a boy. And a grieving boy, at that.

"Mom?" Aerith said in a tiny voice. Aerith wasn't an idiot. She could be too incisive for her own good, sometimes. She hadn't gone with the Turks any time they'd tried to force her. She wouldn't date someone truly dangerous or evil.

Swallowing hard and suppressing her own fear, Elmyra took Zack's hand and shook it. "It's good to finally meet you, Zack. Aerith says you need a place to stay for a few days?"

"I told her I'd be fine," he protested awkwardly. "I can just –"

"Zack, no," Aerith said firmly. "Please, you need to be with people right now." She shot her mother a look. "People who care about you and how you're feeling, not how soon you'll be over Angeal and back on the job."

Pain flashed behind Zack's eyes. Whoever this person was whom he had lost, there was a bond there that had shattered him when it broke. Elmyra remembered pain like that. She had gained Aerith and had her new daughter to concentrate on in the aftermath. Now it seemed Aerith was trying to help Zack the same way.

"You must stay with us," Elmyra said decisively. "We'd be happy to have you. Just so long as you don't mind helping me prepare dinner."

He blinked at her. "Uh …"

"Have you ever cooked before?"

"Not … successfully."

"Well then, now is an excellent time to learn."

Aerith pressed close to her when Zack went to wash his hands. His huge body in their small kitchen looked so out of place, it was almost comical. "Thanks, Mom."

Elmyra hugged her tight. "You're welcome, sweetheart."


	21. Zack: Mentor

Zack swept the sword down at an angle that would've decapitated Cloud, had he still been there. His speed was much improved, Zack reflected, bringing the blade up and bunching his muscles under him in a leap designed to bring him in close.

Swordplay was, by definition, more effective at close range. Long-range was for snipers and assassins, not SOLDIERS. Throw a sword at an opponent like an arrow and it kind of defeated the point, especially if you missed, though he'd seen desperate men do it before. Zack hoped – no, he _intended_ – never to give up his sword unless there really was no other option, and even then he anticipated going to fetch the thing back afterwards. Neither rain, nor wind, nor stinky monster guts would keep him and Angeal's last gift apart for long.

He thought briefly about his mentor as Cloud dodged his attack. Not so long ago it'd been Zack doing the dodging and getting his ass handed to him. Now he was the more experienced and used all the tricks he'd learned in Wutai to try and trick Cloud into making a mistake. He was faster and stronger, the mako in his blood giving him an edge, but Cloud had gotten wily. He was also less easily distracted than Zack had been when Angeal first took on his training, which meant he'd learned more theory in the same amount of time.

Cloud feinted and faked and generally tried to skip out on facing Zack directly because that would be suicide. Smart move. Still doomed to failure, though. Cloud's tactics were like wolves attacking prey bigger than them – dash in, slash, then get away again before it had time to react. It was classic dripping-water-on-stone strategy, designed to wear an opponent down or frustrate them into making a fatal error. In a group like a wolf pack this was fine, but one on one? Not so much.

 _Time to bring this one home_.

Zack hadn't been holding back, per se, but he hadn't exactly been cutting loose. He didn't cut loose now, either, since a First Class cutting loose could level a building and reduce a grunt like Cloud to a greasy stain on the ground. Zack liked Cloud. He didn't want to turn him into a greasy stain. For one thing, it'd be difficult to replace someone so honest and eager to please, plus he'd only just got the guy trained in the fine art of How Zack Likes His Coffee.

Zack pushed off, put on a burst of speed and came in under Cloud's defences. Spooked by Zack's sudden appearance, Cloud made the mistake of moving his blade from a defensive to an offensive position, leaving his chest exposed on the upswing.

Zack could've easily angled his own sword around in a perfect stab through the heart. Instead, he hooked one heel behind Cloud's legs and tripped him up in a basic manoeuvre. Cloud tried to save himself with a handspring, but with Zack so close it was no use. He landed flat on his back, sword-arm outstretched, and flinched when Zack's sword thrust into the floor next to his head.

"Thus endeth the lesson," Zack smiled.

Cloud blinked up at him. A frustrated noise lurked in his throat and his forehead furrowed. "I did it again."

"Yeah, but you lasted longer this time."

"I can't believe I made the same mistake _again_." Cloud was breathing hard, but Zack still heard the anger in his voice. "I always lose it when my defences are breached. I should _know_ by now how to react when that happens."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, buddy –"

"I'll bet you never made simple mistakes like that."

"Are you kidding? Angeal used to say my head was made of layers of titanium netting – everything took twice as long to find a way in and even longer to stay there."

Cloud grunted.

Zack rolled his eyes. Honestly, Cloud could be so obsessive sometimes. "Look, let's put this in perspective: me, a First Class SOLDIER who's had to hack up more than a few monsters to keep them from shredding his devilishly handsome face; you, a normal guy with basic training and no mako in you. Kind of like swatting a fly with a tank. Under those circumstances, you did pretty good."

"Thanks for reminding me." Cloud rolled sideways. The fact he wasn't yet a SOLDIER of any class was still a sore point. "Were you even trying?"

"A little." Zack grinned. "You nearly made me break a sweat."

Anybody else would've replied with a well-deserved, "Asshole," but Cloud just looked at him with an expression that implied it. He was always so polite, a proper little country boy with manners inscribed right down to his bone marrow. It had taken months for Zack to chisel away that veneer to the person underneath, who thought and felt and had opinions of his own.

Then Zack reflected that he was also a country boy and had learned the hard way to be more respectful to his superiors than, say, shortening their names to just initials and giving a thumb's up instead of a salute. Hm, maybe it was a northerner thing.

"Seriously though," he said, attempting to bolster his friend's confidence – or at least bandage his pride, "you're improving."

"Humph."

"You _are_. You nearly hit me a couple of times today, and you're definitely a lot faster than you used to be. Lighter on your feet, too. Some of these outcroppings are narrow." He gestured at the solid-holograms surrounding them. "I'll bet if it was you against another SOLDIER he'd get a shock at how good you are for an infantryman."

"Yeah, right before he separated me from my lungs." Cloud was pragmatic and, Zack felt, unreasonably downbeat. Yeah, probably another SOLDIER _would_ kill him, and probably it _would_ be messy, and more than a bit painful, but did he have to be so gloomy about it?

"Hey, if you'd rather not do this anymore…" Zack left the sentence hanging.

Cloud quickly shook his head. "No, I … sorry, that was ungrateful. I do appreciate you giving me extra training like this."

"Damn skippy." Technically, ordinary grunts weren't allowed into the VR Chambers. Shinra was careful with its finances and didn't like the idea of expensive equipment being ruined by men whose future might be in cannon fodder. Still, Zack was a First Class and that came with certain privileges; like being able to use the rooms whenever he wanted, provided they hadn't been booked in advance, borrow extra swords from the equipment stockpile and not be questioned afterwards as long as he didn't damage anything. "You're too hard on yourself. You need to take time off sometimes from being such a perfectionist."

"Easy for you to say. You're a natural at this."

"Pfft." Zack made a noise like the whoopee cushion he used to sneak onto Angeal's chair before important meetings. "Much as I like the mystique that gives me, I have to reply with a big fat 'yeah right!' I've had more injuries from training than you've had hot dinners. Plus I was in a war. You learn fast in those sorts of circumstances. These skills are hard won." He struck a pose. "I've suffered for my art, and I didn't even have a good friend like me to smooth out my rough edges before I got myself a mentor."

"What about Second Class Wainwright?"

Zack paused. Cloud only knew Kunsel by reputation and seeing him around Shinra. As a Second Class, Kunsel had never undertaken sole training of any corps, and showed no interest in advancing to First, and the responsibilities thereof, anytime soon. He was an anomaly that way. Zack had been itching to advance to First almost as soon as he became Second, but Kunsel had languished on the lower tier for years and seemed perfectly happy to stay there. His friendship with Zack hadn't _suffered_ , but they did see a lot less of each other than when they were both the same Class. Zack couldn't remember the last time they'd had an actual conversation, outside email, longer than it took to pass each other in the hall.

Still, Cloud was right. Kunsel had been there to see all the embarrassing rough edges Zack would rather forget, and had helped sand a few down as they both muddled their way through basic training. Maybe that was why Zack had decided to help Cloud when the poor guy failed his SOLDIER exam. He knew first-hand that sparring with someone was the best way to improve your skills.

"Don't worry, buddy. We'll make a SOLDIER out of you yet."

Cloud eyed him with suspicion, before allowing his face to relax. He looked much less like a human stress ball that way. Desire to get into the SOLDIER programme had etched lines into his face that weren't nearly as pronounced when Zack first met him, several years ago on that mission to the frozen north. And on that note, how many people could say their friendship _started_ with a helicopter crash?

You could bake potatoes in the sheer intensity of Cloud's wish to succeed. His continuing failure and dejection had inspired Zack to offer the odd sparring session to help hone his skills. Cloud had passion and drive, and saw entry into the SOLDIER programme as a way of gaining respect, but he wasn't a naturally gifted warrior. He was too focussed on what came next to fully process the here and now. He thought about the future a lot and the past not enough, since one seemed more attractive to him than the other, and that showed up in his fighting style. He always tried to think a few steps ahead and got tangled up in his own feet because of it.

Like today's match; he'd been so intent on anticipating Zack's attack that he'd neglected to shore up his defences before moving into what he thought was the best response. Zack had killed people before, but he wasn't needlessly bloodthirsty. Still, he didn't want his friend killed because he forgot to check an opponent was dead before turning his back on the guy.

To that end he'd kind of taken on Cloud's training as more of a mentor than just as a friend. Just a little. He was nowhere near Angeal's level, and the higher-ups didn't consider him capable of having an actual apprentice of his own yet, which might indicate certain things Zack didn't like to think about, but …

Thinking about his own mentor still hurt, but it was a dull ache, not the searing agony it had been at the beginning. Time didn't heal wounds, but it did put a buffer in place so you could get on with what needed to be done without feeling like you'd swallowed a razor blade.

"Are you seeing your lady friend tonight?" Cloud asked.

"'Lady friend'?" Zack echoed. "How old-fashioned are _you?_ She has a name, y'know."

Cloud shrugged. He was kind of uncomfortable about women, as though courtship was still a major issue with strict rules and shotguns at the end if you didn't follow them.

He didn't talk much about his past. Not unless he was badgered, which Zack was good at, so he'd gleaned that Cloud hadn't exactly been Mr. Popularity back home, and that his pre-enrolment dating record was slim-to-none. There had been a girl he liked, but Zack doubted their relationship had even made it to friendship, much less romance. Though much less uptight than he used to be, Cloud still seemed to think of girls as mysterious, unfathomable creatures, and would probably have an aneurysm if one he didn't already know came up and talked to him. One of these days Zack would have to introduce the guy to Aerith, maybe ask if she had a friend who could teach Cloud the error of his ways.

"So are you going to see her?"

"Yup." Zack easily swung his sword onto his back and reached to help his friend up.

Cloud sniffed. "You're going to shower first, right?"

"I should kick your ass for that."

"You already did."

"Touché. Wait, was that an actual joke?"

"Might've been."

Zack grinned. There was hope for Cloud yet. "C'mon. Let's get that sword back to the stores before you're arrested for theft of Shinra property and assaulting an officer."


	22. Rod: Turk

The skin on the back of Rod's neck rippled. The air in this part of Sector Six tasted bitter and so dry it excavated his head. Coughing into his fist as a distraction, he flicked his gaze round and confirmed his suspicions. They were being watched.

The kid in the alley ducked out of sight before Rod could get a proper look at his face. Rod squinted at the crowd around him, wondering whether it was worth cutting through them to follow. All he had to go on was a gut feeling, which wouldn't have been enough to convince Veld that he had just cause to get side-tracked from today's assignment. However, Rod put a lot of faith in gut feelings; plus Veld wasn't around to chew him out anymore. Tseng wouldn't like it, but he wasn't the chewing out kind –

"Hey, Rod." Fingers snapped in front of his face. "Ground Control to Rodriguez. Come in, Rodriguez."

"Quit it." He pushed the hand away. "Get outta my face, Naifu."

"Well _someone_ fell out the wrong side of the bed this morning." Naifu barely came up to his shoulder, but when she was pissed you knew about it. Right now she wasn't, but she wasn't pleased either. "Keep your head in the game. You've been jumpier than Reno trying to sit down after a three-bean burrito ever since we came down here. What's up?"

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that." She inclined her head at him. "Is it me? We aren't usually partnered together, but I didn't think going on an assignment with me was _that_ bad." She theatrically sniffed her armpits and shook her head. "Nope. Clean as a whistle. And I'm not sniffing anywhere else while we're in public. It would _completely_ ruin the Ruthless Hard-Nosed Turk image I've got going."

Rod snorted. Naifu looked as ruthless and hard-nosed as a pixie. Fey-like and slender, with a clumsiness that usually made the room erupt with laughter when she landed on her ass, you'd never know she was the deadliest knife-thrower Veld ever recruited. Her entire personality was too playful to match the reputation of the Turks, but she stuck to the most important rule Veld had drummed into them from their first day: Turks always got the job done. Veld being gone now didn't change that.

She punched Rod in the shoulder. He didn't even sway. "Don't diss me!"

"I'm not dissing you, ditz."

"I am not a ditz!" She frowned, following his flickering gaze. " _You_ are acting way weird, though. What's up?"

"I told you; nothing."

Her frown deepened. A pensive looked crossed her face. "Which Sector did you used to live in?"

He didn't look down at her. "Six."

"Oh crap."

"It's fine. Let's move it before we're late. Don Corneo's probably waiting for us."

"Hardly. That fat gut likes to keep _us_ waiting, no matter what time we arrive. It really winds Tan up –" She stopped. The reason they had been partnered together today rose like a hidden rake she had stepped on. Her chin dropped onto her chest as she walked.

Rod stuck his hands deep in his pockets. They all had pasts, which they talked about with varying degrees of reticence. For all her light-heartedness, the quickest way to make Naifu clam up was to ask about the life she used to lead in Old Corel before she became a Turk. He talked about his motorcycle gang only slightly more.

Tan had been one of Corneo's bodyguards before he was a Turk. It was why, after Veld got Corneo's assassins to back off the guy for deserting, Tan had been put on Sector Six detail as a show of good faith. Don Corneo traded information with Shinra's administrative department, but the relationship was tenuous at best. He demonstrated he was on the level by not killing Tan whenever he and his partner were sent to Wall Market to collect from him. Shinra paid for Corneo's services, but reminded him who was really in charge by parading The One Who Got Away at every opportunity.

That is, until Tan got himself killed while searching for another deserter: Genesis Rhapsodos.

Veld always taught his Turks not to get too attached to each other and not to linger over death – death they made happen, death they found while on the job, or any death that shrank their own ranks. Nevertheless, you got attached to your partner – or at least the person you were partnered with most. Reno and Rude were the prime example of when it worked. Helena and Richie, too. Tan and Naifu hadn't been partners for long, but they'd been headed the road of Successful Match-Up when Tan was sent out after the runaway SOLDIER with a newbie who was such a hit with the ladies he was known only as The Player. Neither of them came back. It had hit Naifu hardest, though she hid it well.

Rod and Tan hadn't been friends. Rod wasn't really friends with anyone. He had abandoned the people he called friends when Veld offered him a place in the Turks. Rodriguez Motero grew up in Midgar and fought his way from cradle to adulthood. He fought to survive, to get respect, to keep lowlifes off his back and to get to the top when he joined a gang that shared his love of motorcycles. Until he joined the Rage Riders he had been fine on his own. Then he got to know what it was like when people had your back, and realised he kind of liked it. Almost as much as he liked being the best at whatever he did. Yet when it came down to it, being the best had won out over the gang-mates who called him friend.

And leader.

He wasn't proud of leaving, but after he tried to rob Shinra and Reno caught him, Rod had received the worst thrashing of his life. He had known then that he had to better himself any way he could. The humiliation was total. There was no other option; not for him. If he was to regain any dignity, he had to recover from that humiliation in his own way.

He had told the gang he was leaving to get stronger. He hadn't just run out on them without a word. He had even placed his second in charge. Alejandro was a good guy, with all the right qualities to be a good leader. He was tough and he knew Sector Six. Moreover, he knew how to survive there. Even so, as Rod walked out the door of their pad, he had known even that the burning between his shoulder-blades meant nothing good. The feeling of being followed now made it worse. He had upped his game a _lot_ since he was eighteen, so he figured he could whoop the ass of anyone who tried something. Punk kids from a Midgar slum were nothing compared to the scum he had faced since joining up.

"That's the fourth time I've seen that boy," Naifu said pleasantly. Did nothing get this kid down? "I think we're being tailed. And by someone who's really, really bad at it. Too young to be one of Don Corneo's flunkies, but he has tatts."

A lot of Corneo's employees were recruited from gangs, and so still carried the facial tattoos that had marked their loyalties. Tan had been a gang member before he was tempted onto Corneo's payroll. His wild shock of dark hair and the black stripe down his cheek had made him a distinctive face in Shinra's corridors. Rumour had it that his rivalry with Reno stemmed from Reno being pissed that the mystique about his own tatts had been ruined when Tan arrived and explained what they were for.

Tatts. Well that was a relief. At least that meant it wasn't a Rage Rider following them. Rod had resisted the tattoo thing, he said at the time because it made you a target the moment you hit the street. Later he wondered whether he had just been keeping his options open to leave with the least amount of fuss. If you wore tatts you were a gangbanger for life. If you didn't, you could be anything. You could keep reinventing yourself without the vestiges of your old life holding you back.

You could take off a suit easier than you could remove a tattoo. Would he leave the Turks someday? If a better offer came along, maybe; but that was a dangerous mental boulevard, and one he didn't need to stroll down right now. For the moment the Turks were right for him, and he was right for them. He'd be the best Turk he could be, or die trying. He _had_ to be the best.

Naifu had one fist bunched. That meant she had palmed a miniature knife from her stash. Rod wondered where she kept them all. That tiny body didn't offer much room for weaponry, but she never seemed to run out.

"We're here," he muttered. They had reached the Honeybee. Time to go to work.

"Oh goody." Naifu pulled a face. "I just lurrrrve starting my day by being ogled. Although …" She looked speculatively at Rod. "Maybe with you here Corneo will keep his paws to himself. I had to waste a perfectly good throwing needle shattering the light to make him stop last time. He thought it was an electrical surge, but it was actually just to stop Tan doing something stupid. He got some weird ideas about honour and girls sometimes." For a nanosecond her expression wavered. Turks weren't supposed to mourn. Death was a part of the job and Turks always got the job done. Her face righted itself a moment later. "Ugh. All that quivering flesh." She shuddered. "Like a bowlful of jelly – if jelly keeps a gun in its pants to make itself look larger and more of a bad-ass."

"More than I needed to know about Corneo," Rod muttered.

"You and me both. I just hope someday the guy shoots off his own whoosit."

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

_**Rodriguez Motero grew up in Midgar and fought his way from cradle to adulthood.** _

\- Motero is Spanish for 'biker' (according to Babelfish).

The more unfamiliar characters here are actually from Before Crisis. Images of them can be found at finalfantasy (dot) wikia (dot) com (slash) wiki (slash) List (underscore) of (underscore) Before (underscore) Crisis (underscore) (dash)Final (underscore) Fantasy (underscore) VII(dash) (underscore) Characters. The Turk known simply as Rod in the game is also Rod here. Naifu is Knife (female), Tan is Two Guns (male), Helena is Gun (female), Richie is Nunchaku (male) and The Player is … well, the player of BC.


	23. Zack: Boyfriend

Aerith was in her church. It was where she and Zack always met, a neutral ground since her mother had some grudge against Shinra and nearly had apoplexy after the first time she met him and saw his uniform.

He wore it because there were politics under the Plate the same as there were in any city. Though Shinra liked to ignore it, the slums were still a society and had evolved their own rituals and customs. If you didn’t live there, you were an outsider; if you were an outsider you were fair game for anyone desperate or bitter enough to leave you dead and empty-pocketed in an alley. At least the SOLDIER uniform gave advanced warning not to try it. Zack figured it was as much for potential muggers’ safety as his own.

Aerith didn’t have such problems. True, life in the slums was still dangerous for her, but she’d grown up there. She knew her way around the unwritten rules and her new role as flower girl gave her a certain amount of additional protection. If an outsider threatened her then the loose community of Section Five would close around her, shielding their little flower girl and the light she brought into their lives. Midgar was harsh, but even those below the Plate appreciated flowers – especially if it meant the prospect of a good fight. It was one of the reasons Zack could be seen out with her without worrying _too_ much about her being punished for associating with a ‘Shinra pet’.

“Hey,” he said, pushing open the heavy door. “Aerith?”

Her head popped up from behind a pew. Obviously she hadn’t been able to resist tending her precious plants while she waited. “Zack!” She jumped to her feet and ran at him.

Laughing, he scooped her up and swung her tiny body around in a circle. She weighed practically nothing anyway, but his enhanced strength made her feel even more like a rag-doll in his arms. Her laughter mingled with his as she gripped tight and squealed for him to stop. After walking through the filthy streets, Aerith’s smile was like sunshine cutting through smog – likewise her hug when he finally did set her down.

“What a welcome!”

“That’s nothing,” she beamed, standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his. It was a chaste kiss and short. She pulled back first, embarrassed, but Zack just grinned.

“Okay, I take it back. That’s a proper welcome.”

“Silly.” She stepped away from him and went to collect her basket. “So are you ready to go?” Yet another way for him to be more accepted as her boyfriend – by making sure people associated his face with the joy and hope of her flowers, not the fear and revulsion usually connected to Shinra. That’d been Aerith’s idea, and he was happy to go along with it.

“Sure.” He offered her his arm, but she playfully smacked him away.

“I can walk by myself. C’mon, I thought we could start at the park today.”

Not that the mishmash of pipes and concrete was anything like a park in the traditional sense, but the wide space was one of the only places kids could play and not worry about buildings collapsing on them. Maybe someday someone would erect real playthings there. Zack imagined pushing Aerith on a swing. The image wasn’t unappealing.

“Sure, whatever.”

They talked as they walked. Aerith was a good conversationalist, even if she sometimes leaned towards flights of fancy. Still, it was good to have dreams. Zack knew that better than most. She told him about what she’d been up to since he saw her last, apologising that her life must be so boring compared to his. Zack disagreed. Sometimes he longed for a life where 5 a.m. training regimes were somebody else’s problem.

They kept talking when they reached the park, and as people came up and bought Aerith’s flowers. She had some sort of yellow things today; Zack was awful at telling one plant from another. Aerith was dedicated to learning as much about each one as she could, but Zack had been to Wutai where things grew like they couldn’t stop.

Maybe if things ever quietened down properly he’d take Aerith there, he reflected. He had leave, and money saved, and gods knew she deserved time away from the slums. She’d probably like the countryside, and it’d sure be a change from Midgar, where inside was a sunless dump and outside was a desert wasteland. Not exactly the best place to learn about plant-life, though Zack did try. He liked seeing the little smile Aerith got when he was Making an Effort, even if it was usually followed by Zack Messed Up Again. When he was dispatched on his last residential service he brought back an interesting vine, only for her to tell him it was Poison Ivy. The resilience he got from SOLDIER treatments prevented it from affecting him (in her words, he’d have to be dumped in a vat of the stuff to develop a single spot), but it gave her a rash that made her ban him from seeing her for a week, even though he said sorry.

“Are you going away again soon?” Aerith asked, as if reading his mind.

“About due to be dispatched somewhere,” he admitted. “No clue where, though. Wutai’s pretty quiet and the higher-ups are cagey about everywhere else.” He probably shouldn’t be talking to her about this stuff, but who was she going to spill it to?

Aerith paused. Zack took a few steps before stopping too.

“I worry about you when you go away,” she said softly.

“Hey, no frowny face. There’s no reason for frowny face.” Zack linked his arms behind his head, self-conscious. “It’s part of the job.”

“I know that. But…” She raised her eyes to his. “You’re not exactly the most careful person in the world. You take silly risks, so I worry.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

She raised an eyebrow, expression sliding from anxious to unconvinced.

“Hey! I’m not!”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “but sometimes you do seem to have the self-preservation instinct of a lemming.”

Zack’s mouth fell open. That was … pretty good, for Aerith. “You wound me.”

Aerith giggled. Then her face became serious again. “Zack, promise me. Promise me you’ll take care.” The sudden earnestness in her voice put him on his guard.

“What brought this on?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie. I’ve been away on missions before and you’ve never gone this grim – especially since I haven’t even been given the order to move out yet. C’mon, what’s up?”

She looked away. “It’s stupid-”

“Try me.”

“I had … a dream.”

“A _dream?_ ”

“See, I told you it’s stupid-”

“No, wait. Go on.” Zack was interested despite himself.

Aerith fixed him with a reproachful look. “Just trust me, okay? I had a dream, it wasn’t nice, and now I want you to promise me you won’t do something really stupid that’ll get you hurt – or worse.”

Zack looked hurt. “I know I’m not perfect, but I’m not suicidal, either.”

“You push yourself,” Aerith said firmly, and with far more conviction than should’ve been possible, considering she’d never seen him in the field. “You’re still trying to prove yourself to someone. You want to be a hero, but heroes get hurt, Zack. I don’t want you to get hurt…”

Angeal’s face briefly surfaced in Zack’s mind, followed closely by Sephiroth. Okay, so maybe there was some credence to what she was saying, but still … he was a First Class SOLDIER. He could handle himself.

Evidently his face communicated this, because Aerith stepped towards him, laying a hand flat against his chest. Usually it was him initiating contact when they weren’t being playful. Zack looked down at her hand and back at her face, noting the intense tilt of her eyebrows and the way her lips bunched a little in the middle as she willed him to say what she wanted.

He sighed. Damn him for not being able to resist her. “Okay, okay, I promise not to take unnecessary risks that’ll get me maimed, mangled or killed.”

Aerith pouted. “You don’t sound very sincere.”

“What do you want from me? It may all be moot anyhow. I may be relegated to Midgar for another six months training recruits, and you,” he jabbed a finger that just brushed the tip of her nose, “may just be stuck with me.”

She smirked. “Such a chore.”

“You better believe it. I’m the kind of Shinra pet that needs constant attention. And lots of cuddles. Among other things.” He leaned close but she pushed him away, conscious of where they were and the interested faces directed their way.

“Zack!” she hissed.

Zack sighed. He was allowed to sell her flowers and push her cart but not kiss her in public. How unfair was that? What was it that had made him fall for a girl with so many strings attached? He’d never have had this problem if he’d married a girl from Gongaga like everyone always assumed he would.

Yeah right. Gongaga girls could heft a baby under each arm and still chase you down the street to smack you upside the head.

“To be continued?”

Aerith jabbed her own finger against the tip of his nose. “Of course.”


	24. Aerith: Dreamer

Aerith sometimes wished she could just tell Zack everything. He was a SOLDIER after all. If anyone could have an open enough mind to accept her whole story, it was him.

Yet that SOLDIER issue was precisely the reason she felt she couldn’t tell him, even in those moments she most wanted to – when explaining about the Cetra, her biological mother, and her connection with the Planet would be easier than leaving him in the dark to think she was just some whimsical girl who put too much faith in gut instinct. Much as she wanted him to understand her better, she didn’t want to put him in a position where he had to choose between Shinra and herself, and if he knew the truth, and found out how long Shinra had been trying to bring her in … there were bound to be longstanding orders employees were supposed to follow if they came across her. Zack would have to follow them, and if he didn’t …

It was just tempting fate. As long as Zack remained ignorant, he wouldn’t have to choose.

And it was nice to be treated like a normal girl, with normal feelings, hopes and dreams of the future. Even her adoptive mother wasn’t so great at that. With Zack, Aerith felt like she was allowed to be flippant and more superficial than the weight of the Planet in her mind suggested she should be. She could joke with him, have fun with him, be silly and give herself up to the fact she wasn’t even out of her teens yet. For the brief time they spent together they were each allowed to be more … well, _human_ than other people in their lives expected them to be.

Still, when he looked at her like the way he did in the park, she wished she could just blurt it all out. Zack didn’t give much weight to her bad feelings. That’s all they were to him. In Zack’s world, bad feelings could be the result of a spicy meal before you went to bed, or being overstressed, or any number of other mundane reasons. In Aerith’s they were evidence of her heritage and taking them seriously was mandatory.

_It would be easier if I could actually understand them, though._

She lay in bed, too hot and restless to sleep. And, she privately admitted, she didn’t want another nightmare. She’d slept badly for a whole week, and last night had been even worse.

The recurring swirls of images and emotions always made her wake up feeling sick. She didn’t remember a lot of what she saw when she woke, and what she did remember she didn’t understand, except that it frightened her and _wasn’t_ just because of a spicy meal. All she really knew was that something evil was there when she closed her eyes. It spewed darkness like a geyser. It wasn’t attacking, but the danger it radiated was ever-present and nauseating. It didn’t matter if you tried to run, it would still reach you. Everything loathsome, everything dangerous, everything you’d ever been afraid of as a child was there in that formless, unknown _thing_. She was never quite able to see it, but that just made it even more terrifying.

Those dreams had been bad enough, but last night Zack had also become a part of things somehow. Aerith had felt his presence, knew he was going to run forward and fight the thing, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he must _not_. The risk was too big. He’d get hurt. The thing was too dangerous even for a SOLDIER – even for Zack, whose incredible reputation had permeated even as far as Sector Five. It may even be too big for General Sephiroth – and as soon as that realisation arrived Aerith had woken and rushed to the bathroom. She’d spent the rest of the night worrying, until she finally decided to try broaching the subject with Zack _without_ giving away her secrets.

Easier said than done.

She couldn’t stop Zack from being sent away on a mission. Maybe it wouldn’t matter even if she could. For all she knew, the danger was right here in Midgar, but at least here she could be close to him. If he got hurt, she could heal him. Shinra had their ways, but she trusted her own abilities more. Hadn’t she fixed him up when he came crashing through the roof of the church?

She smiled at the memory even through her anxiety. No simple entrance for Zack. That would be too ordinary. And then offering to pay for the damage with a date, like she should be honoured he’d spend time with her! Yet his smile and the genuine delight when she agreed wiped away any irritation at his arrogance. You couldn’t help but like Zack. It was almost genetically impossible _not_ to.

He had become so precious to her so quickly, despite a lifetime of keeping her personal connections small in case one of them accidentally – or deliberately – gave her away to Shinra. The betrayal of that would have been too much, but staying safe was a lonely business.

Zack had taught her that she didn’t have to be so afraid all the time. If even a big tough SOLDIER, one of the bloodthirsty warriors she’d feared almost as much as the Turks, could be as nice as Zack, then maybe the world wasn’t all that bad after all. Maybe one day she really would get out of Midgar and be able to live without constantly looking over her shoulder. Maybe even the last Cetra could have a life that was truly free, not just a reasonable facsimile. More than anything, Zack had taught her about hope. She’d defend that to the last.

Her, defend _Zack?_ As if.

Still, what was that story about a mouse chewing through the ropes that bound a snared lion? The weak didn’t always have to be so passive. They could be just as useful as people who were powerful.

But what could she do? She’d relied on ducking and dodging for so long. Hiding was her way of life. She’d never considered fighting the Turks who periodically came to ‘escort’ her to Shinra as ‘one of their guests’. She wasn’t that stupid. Subterfuge and avoidance were much better weapons in that kind of conflict. In this, though … For the first time in her life, Aerith _wanted_ to fight. She wanted to be able to protect what was precious to her. The dreams made her feel helpless, and she hated the feeling. Maybe that was what they were for – the Planet warning her it was time to start taking action unless she wanted to lose what she loved.

At breakfast she managed only a piece of dry toast, and that at her mother’s insistence. She still felt queasy after falling asleep and seeing the nightmare again. It had strengthened her resolve, if not her stomach. Under her mother’s watchful eye, however, she ate every bite, feeling somehow that she owed that bit of compliance, since her destination this morning was somewhere her mother would have a fit about if she knew.

“You’re very pale this morning. Are you feeling all right?”

A spasm of guilt jack-knifed through Aerith. “I’m fine. Didn’t sleep well.” She waved a vague hand. “Bad dreams.” Easier to tell part of the truth than all of a lie.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t go out today -”

“No, no! I mean … I’ll be fine. I need to get out. You know I hate being cooped up.” A leftover of years shut away in what amounted to a glass box so she could be prodded and poked until she cried. Aerith shivered inwardly. She remembered that part of her life all too clearly, despite only being a child at the time.

“Well … all right. But I’d like you to come home for lunch, at least. I could use the company.”

“And you want to check up on me.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“You fuss too much.”

“I’m allowed to fuss. It’s in the Mother’s Handbook.”

Elmyra loved her like they really were mother and daughter. Even when had Aerith felt most like a misfit, like she didn’t belong and would only bring harm because of what she was, the woman’s love and protection had never wavered. Elmyra knew that just living with Aerith was a risk – if not now, then one stored up for later, if Shinra ever grew tired of keeping her on the back-burner and tried to recapture her in earnest. Yet she’d never wavered in standing by her promise. Not even when she and Aerith made their way home by ducking behind carts, down alleys and skittering along flat rooftops to avoid being seen by idle Turks who sometimes came below the Plate to get their kicks and blow off steam.

Aerith hated keeping secrets from her mother even more than she hated keeping them from Zack, but this morning it was unavoidable.

Lady Keshoohin’s wasn’t far from her church. You couldn’t hear the music at that distance, but the men who headed out that way from the built up areas of Sector Five went by a different route. They disliked going by a battered church if they were heading for a brothel. There was a kind of protection in the old guilt and saintly disapproval surrounding the place, which meant most of the Lady’s girls passed by if they went out. The idea was that they’d be harassed less that way while they were off-duty. It didn’t always work, though, which was how Aerith had found Kuchibeni so easily that time.

She’d only been fourteen, Kuchibeni three years older, but already with the look of someone much older. It wasn’t the make-up or the way she dressed it, but the glint in her eyes that did it. All Lady Keshoohin’s girls developed it over time – a hardness, like precious stones that glitter but absorb more light than they reflect. Regular street-walkers got a vacant stare, probably from imagining themselves anywhere but where they were, or else from whatever drugs they used to anaesthetise themselves against the truth of their lives. Lucid was the latest culprit, but anything to take the edge off was rife in the slums. Those who caught the Lady’s eye enough for her to bring them into the fold didn’t have to worry about safety in the same way as regular street-walkers. They were the lucky ones – of a sort.

The Lady’s place had a limited clientele, regular health checks, a strict no-drugs policy, and bouncers reputed to be as tough as the Turks themselves. Added to this, it was that rare thing among brothels in Midgar: an entirely female establishment. Lady Keshoohin, an ex-whore with a mind like a buzz-saw hiding behind a face like an elderly apple, had fought tooth and nail to create her business and make it a success. She refused to employ men; on the grounds they’d done nothing for her while she was working the streets except keep her on them. Her pimp had got all his girls hooked on drugs to make them more biddable, and she’d spent years getting herself clean before striking out on her own. The entire sex trade was set up as if designed solely to make it easy for predators, so she set out to change that. Even the muscular bouncers on the door were women. Strangely, this seemed to turn men on more than it turned them off, because there was always a waiting list to get on Lady Keshoohin’s books.

At seventeen, Kuchibeni had been a new recruit to the Lady’s ranks, inexperienced in everything except the lesson that life is tough. She’d believed that more than ever when she was followed and attacked by a pair of johns only a few feet from the church’s door. Fully expecting to die in the gutter, it had been a complete shock when she woke up to find some kid in a dress tending her like she actually mattered.

Aerith had brought her to the safest place she knew: the church. She’d healed her wounds while she was unconscious so as not to arouse suspicion, fetched better clothes than what Kuchibeni’s attackers had left her, and didn’t want any kind of payment. To Aerith, helping had been as natural as breathing. To Kuchibeni, it had been a sudden shaft of light in endless shadow. She’d been a nothing then, just another nameless face on the lowest rung of the ladder. Over time she’d risen through the ranks and was now practically a madam herself, but she never forgot the kid in the dress.

The Lady worked from the shadows, manipulating the politics of Under-Plate life like a ghost. Nothing could ever be traced back to her. Kuchibeni, too, had a lot of influence after all her years of service. Aerith knew, even if her mother didn’t like to acknowledge it, that she would never have been able to escape the Turks’ attentions for so long without Kuchibeni’s help.

“Those are women of ill-repute,” her mother said when she found out what Aerith had done. “Kind as that was, sweetheart, you mustn’t go near that place or those people. Guilt by association, Aerith. Life’s hard enough without giving people the impression you’re offering more than you actually are.” She disliked harsh women like Lady Keshoohin – cruel women who had cut off their feminine instincts to survive, and then replaced them with garish reproductions. Those kinds of women would think nothing of selling you out if it meant their survival over your own.

Still, Aerith nursed the belief that Kuchibeni wasn’t like that. She could be cruel, of course; you had to be, to survive when you literally had nothing. But Kuchibeni wasn’t cruel in the truest sense. There was a difference between acting cruel and being it; a sense of satisfaction, Aerith supposed. Lady Keshoohin took pleasure in watching her bodyguards thrash johns who couldn’t settle their tabs. Kuchibeni saw violence as necessary but not enjoyable – something you should excel at to ensure you never had to use it.

The way her face lit up whenever she saw Aerith, and the way the sapphire-hardness of her eyes briefly faded into actual warmth, had convinced Aerith right from the beginning that Kuchibeni was her ally and could be trusted. More so, at least, than Lady Keshoohin, which was why she went direct instead of through proper channels for this. Lady Keshoohin might tell the wrong people, and one thing that was constant in her world and everyone else’s was that information was power.

“You want to _what_?” Kuchibeni said when she heard Aerith wanted to see her.

“I want you to teach me how to fight.”

“You know what you askin’, girl?”

“I know.”

“Some people in this world, they ain’t supposed to fight. They supposed to be all innocent an’ shit.” Kuchibeni canted her hips and folded her arms. “You ain’t no fighter, honey. You a little mouse, runnin’ around, keepin’ clear of them cats. Ain’t no mouse gonna try to take on a cat, ‘cept crazy ones who don’t live long.”

“I don’t want to fight the Turks.”

“I say that? I don’t remember sayin’ that. You puttin’ words in my mouth, girl.” Kuchibeni arched one flawlessly plucked eyebrow. She knew Shinra was after Aerith, but had never asked why, just like she’d never asked how she could pass out hearing a john’s foot crack her rib and wake up all in one piece.

Maybe she already knew. It was amazing, the things a man would tell a woman if she asked at the right moment, and there were executives who chased cheap thrills below the Plate before heading back to their wives and plush offices.

Aerith met her gaze without wavering.

“Who you gonna fight then, girl? Ain’t no fool in Sector Five’d attack you. Not ‘less they wanna face the consequences. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

“And I’m grateful,” Aerith said calmly. “But I still want to be able to fight.”

Kuchibeni examined her nails as if they were just having a casual conversation and she was name-dropping for effect – which she was, just not the one you’d assume to look at her. Six feet tall, built like an Amazon Warrior, Kuchibeni was an imposing figure who softened her appearance with feathers and ruffles. When she was working she hid a studded dog-collar under the boa, to give the impression of submissiveness even though she’d strangle a guy with a leash if he brought one. After years of perfecting her techniques, she knew all the tricks for how to manipulate men without giving up control. She’d offered to teach Aerith once, listed off a few things and then screamed with laughter at the younger girl’s expression. Nobody messed with Kuchibeni, and even those who didn’t know her reputation thought twice about taking her on. Gone was the skinny, lanky teen Aerith had rescued. Now she had the look of someone who could crush steel just by looking at it scathingly.

“You know,” Kuchibeni drawled, “that Don Corneo’s not limited to Sector Six. Keeps most of his business there, but he visitin’ Lady Keshoohin’s from time to time, too. An’ not just to check out the competition, neither. Man like that, he got a lotta guys workin’ for him. He sends ‘em all over, into every sector on jobs, know what I mean?” The implication was clear. A whisper in the right ear and Kuchibeni could have any one of a number of disreputable characters eating out of her hand. “If you need protection -”

“This is different. I’m not looking for trouble, and it’s not looking for me. Not any more than usual, at least. But trouble might be looking for someone I care about, and I want to be able to help if it finds him.”

This time Kuchibeni’s eyebrow tried to climb into her hairline. “This that SOLDIER boy of yours?

Aerith blushed.

Kuchibeni gave a hoot of laughter. Everything about her was brash, from her fashion sense, to her make-up, to her voice. When she spoke softly you knew you were in real trouble. If she wore dowdy colours and went bare-faced, you’d be hard-pressed to recognise her as the same woman.

It took a while longer, but eventually Kuchibeni agreed.

“Ai’ight, ai’ight, I’ll do it. S’clear to me you gonna find a way to fight somehow, prolly with some nutball with skills like a sack of cement. Leastways if I teach you I can make sure you got enough in your head not to get killed if your SOLDIER boy brings a fight your way. But you gotta give me sumthin’ in return, honey.”

“I have some money -”

Kuchibeni gave her a cutting look. Aerith fell silent. “Since when it ever been about money ‘tween us, sugar?” She gestured at the church, but it was clear she was referring to her room back at Lady Keshoohin’s. They always talked here, where it was safer. Kuchibeni was loyal to Lady Keshoohin, but trusted her only as far as she could sneeze her out of her ear. “I’m re-outfittin’ my boudoir in pink. Think you can get me some kinda pink flowers I can dry an’ press for wall-decorations?”

Aerith smiled. In a city as drab and dark as Midgar, people became insensitive all too quickly. But even the harshest could be swayed by things they thought they’d never see in their lifetimes. They didn’t _want_ to be made of stone, which even they didn’t realise until they saw a rose for the first time. Sometimes she was shocked at how even the most unexpected people valued plants. Maybe there was hope for the world after all – something she would never have known if Zack hadn’t put the idea into her head to sell them.

Zack …

“I think I can manage that.”

Kuchibeni’s grin was sharp as a snake-fang. “Then you got yourself a teacher, girl. We’ll work here. Plenty of room to move around and it won’t matter none if we break a few more boards. Wear sumthin’ comfortable – none of them floaty summer dresses or any of that shit. Startin’ tomorrow mornin’, you gonna be learnin’ how to fight, Kuchibeni-style.”

* * *

** Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs **

* * *

_Lady Keshoohin’s wasn’t far from her church._

\-- Keshoohin is a rough translation of ‘cosmetics’.

_Kuchibeni gave a hoot of laughter._

\-- Kuchibeni is Japanese for ‘lipstick’.


	25. Naifu: Mischief Maker

Naifu balanced the dagger-tip on her index finger. She wore gloves to protect her hands, so it didn’t cut her. Not that she would’ve let it regardless. She was clumsy enough to fall over her own feet just getting up in the morning, but when it came to her blades she was nimble to the tenth power. Nobody was better than her.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?” She didn’t take her eyes off the wobbling hilt.

“That. You make me nervous.”

“ _I_ make _you_ nervous?” A flick of the wrist sent the dagger spinning end over end. She snatched it out of the air with ease and waggled it at Cissnei. “What about when you get out that red metal monstrosity and start playing with it?”

“Rekka is a shuriken, and I don’t play with it. I clean it, I whet it, I polish it, and I check the retractable blades actually retract.”

“Whateverrrr.” Naifu pocketed the dagger and flopped forward. Her head banged against the tabletop. “Ow.” She let it rest there and sighed. Warm air blew back up her nose. “I’m bored.”

“You can’t be bored. You only just finished eating.”

“I _am_ bored. And that was Wutaian food. I’ll be hungry again in half an hour. Until then, I’m bored.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because you’re here. And I was kind of hoping you could make me not bored.”

Cissnei’s feet were propped on the table, the better to balance a cardboard box of noodles in her lap. She picked out something small, white and round and ate it. Her pretty features twisted up in disgust. “Ugh. Water chestnut.”

“I thought you liked chestnuts.”

“Roasted over an open fire during Yule, sure, but these water chestnuts are terrible. They taste like … I don’t even know what they taste like. Something bad.”

“Probably all the pollution wherever they were grown making them taste like … hey, toss me one of those.” Naifu held up her palm and closed it around the water chestnut Cissnei flicked at her without even trying. She popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Making them taste like pickled dog nuts – yuck!”

“Don’t joke. I think I saw that on the menu.” Cissnei poked her food with less enthusiasm than before. “We’re not talking a real highbrow establishment here.”

“And all those strays on the streets gotta go someplace.”

Naifu looked up at the owner of the new voice. “Legend!”

The older Turk cocked a lackadaisical salute as he sauntered into the room. Turks could eat in the Mess Hall with everybody else, but typically chose not to. They liked to keep themselves to themselves. This room was basic to the point of bareness, with just a table in the middle and various plastic and easy chairs scattered around. There was a TV in the corner, but someone had busted it recently and it hadn’t been replaced yet. Naifu would put money on Youhei as the culprit. That girl was _so_ bad-tempered, and had a habit of lashing out with her wicked martial-arts when she got pissed. Which … actually was most of the time. They went through a lot of TVs.

Legend pulled out a chair, twirling it backwards and straddling the seat. “Ladies. You’re both lookin’ pretty damn luscious today.”

“Give me strength.” Cissnei rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever stop?”

“Why would I stop?”

“Uh, because unlike the women in Costa del Sol, we can easily kick your ass for being such a letch?”

“I’m not a letch.” His expression was hurt, but neither Naifu nor Cissnei believed it. Especially when he could hold it and his usual sly grin returned. It made the skin at the corner of his one eye crinkle, and formed slight brackets around his mouth. Nobody knew how old he was, but ‘old enough to know better’ was a well-worn response. “I’m a connoisseur. I know how to appreciate the finer things in life: fine food, fine drink, fine women – and only one of those three is in this room.”

“I had no idea you considered cheap Wutai takeout fine food,” Cissnei said without missing a beat. She offered him the box. “Want some ginger beef?”

“Yeah, like that’s really beef,” Legend snorted. He pointed to the logo on the side. “Kiki’s Kickin’ Takeaway? Kiki Kaluha wrote the book on how to make rat taste like anything ‘cept rat. Literally. They keep it in back and make all new employees read it.”

Cissnei looked back into the box, plonked it on the table and pushed it away with her foot. “That’s it. I’m done.” She rose and went to the door. “Naifu, whatever you do to make yourself not bored, try not to stab anyone, okay?”

Naifu straightened in mock-indignation. “Show some faith.”

“I’ve been partnered with the newbies. My faith is in pretty short supply right now.”

“Ouch.” Legend’s expression commiserated more than words. Nobody liked being partnered with wet-behind-the-ears newbies when they were used to working with experienced Turks. It was considered babysitting duty and something of a punishment even when it wasn’t. He couldn’t completely hide his grin as he spoke, though. “Good luck.”

“That just made me put your name at the top of the list of recommendations for my replacement when I get off this detail. And Tseng owes me a favour.” Cissnei gave a little finger-wave. “Toodles.”

“ _Never_ ruin a meal for someone just before or just after a fourteen hour shift,” Naifu advised.

Legend shrugged. “So I hear you’re bored?”

“Very.”

His look was speculative. “Wanna hit the target range with me?”

“I can hit any target with any blade. I hate the target range.”

“I wasn’t recommending you use your knives.”

“I hate guns even more.”

“I wasn’t recommending guns either.”

She blinked. Legend was an explosives expert. He was also known for his unorthodox ways and his careless attitude regarding collateral damage. Possibilities opened up before her. “What _were_ you recommending?”

He grinned. “I got me a brand new concoction loaded into some cherry bombs that I’m just _itching_ to test out.”

“Cherry bombs? Those little two-gil toy store things kids flush down toilets?”

“Yup. But believe me, if you flush _mine_ down any toilet, you’d get more than a piss fountain in a porcelain bowl.”

Naifu stared at him. When he smiled that way, he looked kind of evil. She could understand how, during the Wutai war, he’d gotten the nickname ‘God of the Death of the Battlefield’. As if insisting everyone use his first nickname ‘The Legendary Turk’ instead of his real name wasn’t egocentric enough. Legend was arrogant, brash, a total womaniser, and proud of the whole shebang.

But he wasn’t boring.

She smiled back. “Count me in.”

* * *

** Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs **

* * *

_There was a TV in the corner, but someone had busted it recently and it hadn’t been replaced yet. Naifu would put money on Youhei as the culprit. That girl was so bad-tempered, and had a habit of lashing out with her wicked martial-arts when she got pissed. Which … actually was most of the time. They went through a lot of TVs._

\-- Another character from Before Crisis here: Youhei. Again, she can be found at <https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Before_Crisis_-Final_Fantasy_VII-_characters>. Youhei is a name that has several meanings, one of which is ‘mercenary’. She is called ‘Martial Arts (female)’ in the game and actually got a small part in the animated OVA Last Order as the Turk who observed and reported back to Tseng what happened in the Nibelheim reactor.


	26. Cloud: Expert

“Yo, Cloud. Wake up.”

Cloud blinked, only then realising his chin had dropped onto his chest. He scrambled to his feet, snapping off an instinctive salute. “Sorry, sir!”

“Cut that out. It’s just me.” Zack grinned at him. “Or would you prefer me to say ‘at ease’?”

Cloud tried hard not to colour up. Tried, and failed. Thankfully Zack laughing at him wasn’t as bad as it had been in the beginning, when they first met, before Cloud realised that Zack laughed at everybody.

Cloud narrowed his eyes. There was an odd, knowing timbre to Zack’s laugh. Was he _smirking_? Oh boy. Not good. Few people could tell the difference between Zack’s smiles, but Cloud had learned to read into exact quirk of his friend’s eyebrows – usually because it promised some hare-brained scheme or other that would further cement Cloud’s conviction that the vital components of First Classes were strength, courage and mild insanity.

“What’s so funny?”

“You.”

“What?”

No doubt about it; Zack really was smirking. “Three, two, one …”

Cloud’s feet nearly went out from under him. What the hell? He stumbled, realised he was standing on undulating metal, heard the thunder of tyre tread on rough ground, and remembered. Almost instantly his gorge rose. Maybe his motion sickness really was psychosomatic, but all in his head or not, it was a bitch and tasted worse. His only consolation was that General Sephiroth wasn’t sharing this truck.

Zack shook his head. “Time-delayed puking. Classic. Don’t ever change, Cloud. You’re too damn funny as you are.”

Cloud wiped at his mouth and winced as he stood. They’d been travelling for a while, so there wasn’t much to come up anymore, and dry retching made his ribcage hurt. Zack, of course, looked in the peak of health, despite the fact they were in the middle of nowhere, headed into the mountains, climbing dangerous slopes in trucks probably designed by someone who’d never actually experienced a Nibelheim snowstorm. Unless they were equipped with snow-chains as tough as dragon guts, the team would be walking the last part. The valley beyond the peaks would be warmer, but you had to cross rough country first, and that was the bit that finished off the unwary.

Winter in the north wasn’t like winter anywhere else. Cloud had tried to explain to the guys who’d shared his dorm during training, and been met with disbelieving looks – especially when he got to the part about using upstairs windows as both entrance and exit for several months of each year while the lower half of your house was buried in snow. A southerner like Zack had no real comprehension of how to cope in those conditions, although the mako and SOLDIER training maybe provided an edge regular southerners lacked. Southern Softies, locals called them – notwithstanding the fact ‘south’ was anywhere beyond the base of Mount Nibel. Cloud had grown up thinking real toughness required frostbite, and been surprised to learn all the First Class SOLDIERs were from warmer climates.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been wrong about the extent of his own abilities. The rejection by the SOLDIER programme still stung. A regular grunt wasn’t what he’d planned on becoming when he left Nibelheim. It was better than being tossed out of Shinra altogether, but the idea of going back to his home town in the wrong uniform made him even more nauseous than the stupid motion sickness. He’d been picked for this mission because of his knowledge of the terrain and how to survive it. It was his chance to prove his worth to the higher-ups, but given half a chance Cloud would have high-tailed it back to Midgar. Only the presence of Zack and the General made it bearable – his childhood hero and the best friend he never could have anticipated making were a salve to his wounded pride, and to the sense of failure that increased with every mile.

He hadn’t even told his mother he was coming. How pathetic was that?

His thoughts were abruptly curtailed along with the truck’s forward momentum. Cloud pitched forward and nearly ended up on his face. Even Zack had to brace himself.

“What the hell?”

The window-slat between them and the driver slid back. “Uh, sorry Commander. Slight, uh, roadblock.”

Zack frowned, “I repeat: what the hell?”

A high-pitched screech pierced the air. It sounded like a cross between a power saw cutting through metal and a cat being stretched between two dogs. Cloud’s already sore gut sank. He recognised that cry. It was etched into his childhood memories.

“Acid Dragon!” he hissed, half-to himself.

Of course, with his superior SOLDIER hearing, Zack caught the words. He stared at Cloud. “Seriously?”

“Have you ever faced one before?”

“Nope, but there’s a first time for everything.” Zack reached up and around to grip the Buster Sword, even as he spun around and burst out the back of the truck without waiting for it to be unlocked first. The doors slammed outwards, crashing against the sides of the truck and making the whole thing reverberate like they were in the middle of an earthquake.

Cloud scrambled to his feet and dashed after him. It was stupid, but instinctive. “Wait! You don’t know how to -” His words died in his throat. He froze, staring upwards. An extremely bad word skittered across his mind like a stone skimming across a lake, but nothing made it as far as his mouth.

That was … a big one.

The entire truck would have fitted into the dragon’s mouth with room to spare. Its grotesquely disproportionate head swung from side to side, and the huge neck muscles it had evolved to compensate for the weight bulged. Lidless red eyes took in the trucks, but it didn’t make any move towards them. It didn’t look hungry, as Cloud had feared. It didn’t even look all that interested in them. Actually, the creature looked rather bored, as evidenced by the gigantic yawn and the fact it wasn’t attacking already.

This was what had made that terrible noise?

No, of course not. That would be too easy.

The terrible screeching came again. The dragon lifted its head and sniffed the air. Everything and everyone seemed to hold a collective breath. When a third screech came, this time accompanied by another overlarge head pushing through the trees at the side of the road, Cloud knew they were in trouble.

“Tupping season!” he hissed, as the first dragon finally stirred itself and spat like an angry tomcat at the newcomer.

“What?”

Cloud nearly jumped out of his skin. He’d thought Zack had gone charging off elsewhere, but suddenly there he was beside him. You’d think someone carrying a sword bigger than a man would at least crunch the snow, but no.

Zack watched the two dragons with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Cloud had to admit, there were few things as impressive in nature as a bull Acid Dragon in full display. The northern lands were home to a great many rare dragon breeds, which had made it understandable that a place like Nibelheim once relied on them as a source of income and survival. Even the toughest hunting party thought twice about Acid Dragons, though.

Of all the species, Acid Dragons were probably the most bizarre. Some anthropologists had even argued they weren’t true dragons at all, since they couldn’t fly and had an internal biology more like salamanders. Cloud had only ever seen one before, lumbering across the landscape like the product of an experiment by a god who knew what limbs were but not necessarily how to put them together. His father had been killed while hunting an Acid Dragon cow. Though it had been a blizzard that ultimately took his life, the risk he’d run by hunting the beast was enormous. Bulls were even worse.

And this was freaking _tupping season_. Cloud had officially been away from the mountains too long if he’d forgotten that. He should have said something, he should have warned Zack or another commander of what they were risking by travelling at this time of year.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

When displaying, an Acid Dragon’s ugly head became almost regal as it unfurled the leathery fan around its neck and inflated the pouches of loose skin on its head. Though the rest of its scales were black as pitch, the fan was a riot of colour and shifting, eddying patterns. Thanks to some complicated internal workings, the colours actually changed and moved around; giving a good indication of how old and experienced the bull was depending on how many colours it could produce. The ridges of extending purple and blue spikes along each dragon’s spine only added to the effect – at least unless, like Cloud, you knew that each spike was the size of an average man and contained venom so powerful it could dissolve a human body inside two minutes. Acid Dragons, in addition to their impressive displays, were also famous for the fact that there was no part of their bodies that wasn’t poisonous.

“We need to get out of here,” Cloud said breathlessly.

“Shinra’s people don’t just turn tail and run,” retorted one of the other grunts. He’d been in a different truck, but from the disgusted look he gave Cloud, he might as well have stepped in a pile of motion-sickness vomit.

“They’ve already seen each other,” Cloud insisted. “And we do _not_ want to get between them when they start fighting.”

“The General will not let any harm befall us,” said one of the drivers in an accent Cloud couldn’t place.

The faith was admirable. If it hadn’t been here, now, like this, Cloud might have shared it. General Sephiroth epitomised everything Cloud had ever wanted to be. However, these were bull Acid Dragons, and it was tupping season. When they fought for mates and territory these creatures were damn near unstoppable.

Cloud turned an imploring gaze on Zack, who nodded. “I say we retreat. Find another way through. Our objective isn’t to fight local wildlife. This is strictly recon, people. No unnecessary risks; are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

Zack spun around. Cloud didn’t dare. He recognised the cadence and timbre of that voice from Shinra-endorsed interviews and press releases. He clenched his fists against the injustice of finally going on a mission with his hero, but as a nonentity grunt – nothing more than a glorified packhorse sent along to lift and carry things. And now to be overheard sounding like a coward when it was just _common sense_ to flee this kind of situation?

Cloud hadn’t seen the General since mission-briefing, when he discovered they were all being sent to Nibelheim. Cloud and the others had already boarded their transports by the time the First Classes arrived, and Sephiroth had ridden in one while Zack took the other. Cloud had appreciated Zack being his travelling buddy, since throwing up in front of the General would have been just _too_ much, but just the knowledge of Sephiroth being so close by had been enough to make Cloud burn with shame at his own shortcomings.

_A SOLDIER reject. What a disappointment – as usual. Cloud Strife, the eternal failure._

_Shut up brain. You’re **really** not helping_.

General Sephiroth stepped forward to stand on Cloud’s other side. “I’ve not come across these creatures before. You’re familiar with their behaviour patterns?”

Cloud realised he was the one being asked. “Um, yes sir.”

“Strife here is from this area,” Zack supplied.

Sephiroth nodded. “A useful resource. What are they doing now?”

“Displaying, sir. Intimidation tactics. They each try to make the other one back down like this, and if that doesn’t work, they fight.” Cloud swallowed. “They can wipe out entire villages when they do that. It’s always a fight to the death, and they get quite violent.”

‘Quite violent’? Now there was an understatement. Describing an Acid Dragon fight as ‘quite violent’ was like saying Shinra was a little bit powerful.

Part of Cloud couldn’t understand why they were all still there. This was insane. And he was most insane of all, because he _knew_ the dangers and was still standing there like a gormless moron.

“And presumably their famous poison causes as much damage as the actual fighting, after they’ve injured each other and sprayed it across the landscape.”

“Yes, sir.” The General was just as perceptive as everyone said. Or maybe that was the hero worship at work. Either way, Cloud only stopped being impressed when one of the dragons bellowed and lowered its head like a battering ram. Panic dumped a load of adrenaline into his system. “They’re about to engage, sir. We should … we should leave. I mean, it would be advisable to retreat. Now.”

“I understand.” Sephiroth walked forward.

“General,” said Zack in a distinctly warning tone.

“Commander,” Sephiroth replied evenly, as if they were just greeting each other as they passed in the corridor. Then he leaped. Didn’t even take a running start; just leapt into the air, impossibly high, like it was nothing.

Afterwards, Cloud wasn’t able to remember much more than a flash of metal (or was that silver hair?) and a streak of dark leather against the blue sky. Neither dragon acknowledged the puny human. Perhaps they didn’t even see him. Then, abruptly, each one stopped roaring and slumped forward, shaking the ground on impact. They didn’t get up again. Clouds of steam rose from the precise cuts in the tops of their heads, where General Sephiroth had skewered straight through their massive skulls, slicing through the hard bone to get at the brains beneath. The blood flow was minimal – a Very Good Thing, as Zack would say, since what little there was melted whatever it touched. The battle – no, it was an execution – was over in seconds. It probably took longer for the dragons to fall over than it took for the General to kill them.

Sephiroth appeared back in his spot at Cloud’s side as silently and quickly as Zack had earlier. Had that really only been a few minutes ago? It felt like a lifetime.

Cloud stared at the two dangerous creatures, reduced to piles of semi-hazardous meat in ostensibly less time that it had taken to blink. He could barely believe it. He’d thought he knew how impressive Sephiroth could be, but it was only now that he realised the true scale of the General’s skills. No wonder the war in Wutai was over. This man was more powerful than the entire opposing force put together. If he’d wanted, or if Shinra had directed it, Sephiroth could have laid waste to the entire country.

Cloud gulped. Thank Ifrit the General was on _their_ side.

Zack folded his arms. “Show-off.”

Sephiroth wiped Masamune on a patch of snow, dissolving it with the residue. The metal of the blade remained undamaged. Well, of course it would. Such an extraordinary man could have nothing less than an extraordinary sword. “The way is clear now. They were far enough apart that the trucks can pass between them safely. I’ll send word for someone to deal with clean-up. Creatures like this shouldn’t be left to be hacked up and used for disreputable purposes. This is the shortest route to Nibelheim, is it not?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Then it’s imperative we use it. Time is of the essence. Or had you forgotten our mission objective?”

The usually cheerful line of Zack’s mouth hardened. Cloud wondered at that. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Sephiroth nodded.

Zack raised a hand and yelled, “Everybody move out. Back to the trucks before more of these big guys turn up.”

Slightly puzzled by the exchange, but wanting to get out of there in case more _did_ follow the tupping calls, Cloud scrambled for the truck along with the rest.


	27. Youhei: Observer

Youhei was good at her job, whatever it happened to be. As a mercenary she’d taken her share of raw deals, experienced enough betrayals to watch for the tell-tale signs in her comrades, and learned when to bail and when to stick with a job. She wasn’t loyal to anyone except herself.

She wasn’t sure what had changed. Maybe she’d just grown tired of the constant chopping and changing, always having to watch her back and never able to relax for fear of someone betraying her for their own highest bidder. Maybe she was just getting careless in her old age, letting herself believe stuff that only kids really believed in.

Or maybe working with Veld and his Turks, and having someone finally show faith that was more than just part of a contract she’d signed, had made its own changes to Youhei’s character. Whatever the reason, her interpretation of loyalty had been altering for a while now; her interpretation of betrayal as well. When she and a bunch of other Turks kidnapped President Shinra’s son and held him to ransom so they could aid Veld, even though he’d deserted, that was the very definition of betrayal. They’d _all_ broken their contracts and turned on their employer. No mercenary worth their salt would see it as any less than outright betrayal. Yet it had also been the very definition of loyalty, too. Likewise when Tseng got Shinra to leave them all alive, but sold out Veld and his daughter, the AVALANCHE leader Elfé, to buy his Turks their lives and their freedom. Youhei had been forced to rewrite her entire definition of loyalty and still wasn’t sure what it was anymore.

But this type of high-level betrayal? She hadn’t seen this coming. Not after Genesis Rhapsodos. Not after Angeal Hewley. Not _at all_.

She pressed her phone to her ear and hoped the signal was strong enough to get through all this metal. It was, and picked up after just one ring.

“Tseng.”

“Boss-man,” Youhei said in what was, for her, a soft whisper, but which echoed in the open space of the chamber like a foghorn.

Kind of like the heavy breathing of that SOLDIER, and the infantryman who’d just fallen down the stairs headfirst. The SOLDIER had reached for him right before passing out, creating a bizarre tableau that struck an unidentifiable chord in Youhei. Comrades to the end. Brothers in arms. Stuff she’d never believed in until relatively recently, when she almost jacked in her contract with Shinra to go after Veld and help him save his daughter. She’d never reneged on a contract before. She’d never felt strongly enough about anything or anyone to sever a deal before she got paid. This Turk gig had been a regular income after years of hand-to-mouth living, which had appealed to her, but it had brought so much more than a bank account with actual Gil in it.

Now she was once again being confronted by the kind of loyalty she’d thought only existed in stories, and what was she doing? Calling Tseng to tell him about it. Her own kind of loyalty, and it didn’t mesh well with the scene before her, since her report would bring Shinra out here, and Shinra would not be happy.

It sort of made a mockery of her spending her Phoenix Down on the kid with the giant stab wound in his gut. Save him, and then turn him in. Yeah, Youhei, great plan.

She stared at the kid’s face as she talked. And he really was just a kid. She bet he’d never even imagined half the stuff she’d seen and done – or what his SOLDIER buddy had seen and done, come to that. She recognised Zack Fair. Cissnei was sweet on him, or something. Hard to tell with that girl, but there was definitely more on Cissnei’s side than she was letting on. Fair had been in Wutai during the war. That was enough on its own, but he’d also faced off against Rhapsodos during the Mass SOLDIER Desertion Incident, and killed his own mentor when Hewley went spiralling into his own bit of craziness. No, no way this blond kid, with his unscarred cheeks and hint of puppy fat, had known true betrayal and hardship.

Not before today, anyway.

“Youhei here.”

Her voice tore up the air like a cheese grater. It could never be described as melodious. Her mother used to say it was like she’d been gargling battery acid. Big words from a woman whose sixty-a-day habit and nightly drinking had not only put her into an early grave, but also lowered her voice so many octaves she was a tenor by her death at age thirty-five. Not that her daughter had mourned her. Youhei was just glad she could finally quit telling people she’d walked into doors and fallen down stairs when she was really as agile as a squirrel.

Youhei’s accent was as hard on the ears as one of her punches, her nasally twang was as abrasive as her manner, but not right now. Right now she was shocked under her business-like tone.

Case in point: “What is it?” Tseng shouldn’t have had to ask. If she was calling, something was up. He’d sent her out to Nibelheim on pure recon, which should’ve meant coming home and filing a report like usual. A phone call meant only Bad Things.

And how.

“It’s Sephiroth,” Youhei said. “Something happened. He went off the deep end.”

“What?”

“He’s dead, sir.”


	28. Naifu: Pickpocket

“S’all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Yeah. If you hadn’t invented the stupid things in the first place –”

“Hey, kid, I didn’t ask you steal one. I especially didn’t ask you to fall on your ass, let it roll outta your pocket, and watch it light itself on a discarded cigarette.”

“Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill in now? I hate paperwork!”

“You hate everything.”

“Do not! Just paperwork. And your stupid cherry bombs.” Naifu folded her arms. “And being left in Tseng’s office like some naughty little kid sent to see the principal.”

Legend snorted. “This is damn humiliating. I can’t believe a pipsqueak like you lifted one of my bombs without me noticing. You couldn’t be more careful where you drop stuff? You damn near killed your partner and half a block of slums. That should’ve got way more than the ‘whoops’ you said at the scene.”

“How do you know about that?” She eyes him warily. “You weren’t there. Were you?”

“News travels fast. Bad news especially, but bizarre bad news is light-speed.” Legend still hadn’t stopped scowling. His arms had to be cramping, being folded so tight like that. “Damn humiliating,” he reiterated. 

Naifu waited for a few moments before saying, “Impressive though, right?”

Legend didn’t reply. 

“Aw, c’mon. You have to admit, it was pretty good how I got it away from you without you noticing.”

“What were you planning to do with it afterwards?”

“Um …” Actually, the challenge had been the theft itself, she’d forgotten she had it in her top pocket, which was how she’d gotten into this mess after tripping over while on patrol with Rod.

Rod, who had come away from the scene with three broken ribs, a fractured wrist, several gashes and a very strange expression on his face. Since Naifu had been knocked unconscious she wasn’t sure what had happened to make him look that way. Something told her it hadn’t just been the fireworks, but whatever it was, Rod wasn’t telling. Instead he’d withdrawn into himself, leaving her to take the flack without his support. Legend had been dragged in when it emerged where the tiny explosive with the big boom had come from. 

He stared at her now, his one good eye boring into her with the force of a pneumatic drill. “You’re a little punk, you know that?” He sighed and shook his head, as if being that mad drained him of all energy. “An impressive punk, but still a punk, and a pain in my ass.”

Naifu smiled as the tension finally broke. Then her expression switched to alarm as Tseng came in and the entire situation was put on hold at the reason for his lateness. Suddenly a lot of thing became less important, as Youhei, whom he’d sent as reconnaissance for the Nibelheim mission, sent back word that things had suddenly gone to hell in a big way.

“Sephiroth’s dead?” Naifu echoed in disbelief. 

Legend whistled, but his face had paled. He’d served with Sephiroth during the Wutai war. He knew exactly how tough the guy was. Anything that could take out the Silver General was even tougher than that, which was a scary thought on so many different levels. “Well … fuck.”

Since Tseng would never say it, Naifu did. “You said it, buster.”


	29. Aerith: Sceptic

Aerith knew she was being watched. It seemed prudent not to react, since for once the Turks kept their distance and didn’t seem concerned with bringing her in. She didn’t want to change their minds about that. Shinra’s goons coming below-Plate was never good news.

The bizarre thing was, they didn’t go away either. Practically from the day Zack left, she sensed them, watching but never actually approaching her. They were always there, a lumpish suspicion on the fringes of her mind – the kind of feeling you get when you’re convinced you’ve left the front door unlocked or the oven on. It was unnerving, like trying to shower in a room of one-way mirrors with people on the other side. 

What could they want? 

As the days passed, her suspicions blossomed. Something was up. She could feel it crawling along her skin like maggots. 

Tseng came by. That was a rarity in itself. The Head of the Turks delegated tasks to underlings, so if he was here personally...

Her suspicions tightened into a knot of dread.

In a way, Aerith felt sorry for Tseng. In the beginning, he’d been the one who always tried to convince her to return to Shinra willingly. He’d been logical, almost kind, but nowadays that initial kindness had eroded into clinical detachment, apparently in direct proportion with the amount of power he wielded. She wondered about the things he’d seen, done, and ordered, for such changes to occur, and the handful of times she’d seen him since he took over leadership of the Turks, she’d tried hard to spot shreds of the man she’d known in his face. 

His eyes were empty as he stood on her doorstep, not trying to come inside or inviting her out. Yet Aerith got the sense that this wasn’t because he didn’t feel anything, than because at the moment he had nothing to fill his expression with. Tseng was an empty glass, shiny and polished, but still capable of holding emotions if he was so inclined. He just wasn’t so inclined very often. 

When he didn’t volunteer a reason for knocking on her door, she asked bluntly what was going on. He looked at her in that way he sometimes did – blank with just a hint of something more underneath. 

Bizarrely, even though he was a Turk, she didn’t feel like she was in danger around Tseng, but she didn’t exactly feel safe either. He allowed her to push him more than other Turks perhaps would, but she was acutely aware of his role in her world. The fastidiously spotless suit wouldn’t let her forget. She knew he was the one Shinra would tell if and when they finally grew tired of playing games, and she wasn’t sure what he’d do when that happened. 

“Why now? Why, after all this time, have you suddenly upped surveillance of me?” She suspected it was timed to correspond with Zack’s absence, but she couldn’t read anything from Tseng’s face. 

Despite Zack’s claims he was due for a mission away from Midgar, it had been weeks since she started having the dreams, and Zack had remained here until recently. She’d been relieved with each day he remained at her side. Now he’d been shipped out and she was being spied on. That couldn’t be a coincidence. 

Did Shinra think he’d been selling secrets to her or something? Or had Shinra been waiting for him to leave her unprotected? Had she got it wrong when she interpreted the dreams – which still came every night, and still disturbed her enough to throw up at least once a week – and it had been she, not Zack, who was the target of the formless evil? Suddenly her covert lessons with Kuchibeni seemed hopelessly inadequate. The Turks were the bogeymen of her childhood.

That was when Tseng told her Zack was missing. 

She tried not to let anything show in her face, the way Tseng did. She tried to let his words slide off her like water. Tseng couldn’t give her details, of course, but he told her enough to make her heart plummet. There had been an incident. Everybody on the mission had been declared MIA pending further investigation. Even that much information was top security. 

“Why tell me, then?”

“Because I thought you’d already know the truth.”

“I …” She stopped. Blinked. Realised what he meant. 

Aside from Professor Hojo, the man who once oversaw the Cetra Project, Tseng probably knew more about her and her abilities than anyone else in the world. He knew about her connection to the Planet. He knew about the Lifestream, however much he actually believed in it. He knew about the nature of mako, and the hypotheses that it linked those touched by it, like SOLDIERS, to beings like Cetra.

If Zack had died, Aerith would know. She would have felt it. The more she thought this, the more convinced she became that this was the conclusion Tseng had also drawn. Turks were information-gatherers, among other things. He was asking her, without actually asking, whether those on Zack’s mission were dead – which also implied he didn’t know what had happened to them, or at least where they were right now. 

If even the head of the Turks didn’t know, then there was still hope he was okay as well as alive, just in a place Shinra couldn’t reach. Aerith clung to this, even as her dream nudged her mind. 

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. 

Tseng didn’t nod, but he did leave. The Turks kept watching her. They were waiting for something. Aerith took that as a good sign. 


	30. Rod: Quitter

Rod was mad. Mad as hell. Mad as a hornet. Mad as lightning cutting through the sky in a thunder storm. Not about Sephiroth, although that was shocking enough. The hum of traffic from the street beyond the alley undercut his words. He had been ready to shoot the ‘mugger’ stupid enough to grab him, a suited Turk, and drag him down here, until he realised who it really was. Alejandro, his one-time second in command and best friend, looked back at him with arms folded and an indecipherable expression.

Rod knew that the Rage Riders had given themselves up to the feuds. What was more, he knew they blamed him for the ill effects they had suffered because of it. According to their skewed understanding of how things worked on the streets, _he_ had driven them to give up their name and independence to ally themselves with a bigger, stronger gang. That was what the kid he’d pinned down had said, right before Naifu fell on her ass and her stupid cherry bomb flung them both into a building. The chaos that followed had allowed the kid to get away, but Rod had known someone would be back. That it was Alejandro just made this easier. He wouldn’t have to interpret hearsay; he could get answers straight from the source: the guy who had broken his trust and sold them out.

“What the _fuck_ were you thinking?” he demanded.

“Nice to see you too, bro,” Alejandro said easily. The livid red of his tatts made him look like he had been slashed across the tops of his cheekbones. They drew attention to his eyes, which were anything but relaxed. Rod fell instinctively into a defensive stance at the fury burning in them.

“You joined one of the big gangs?” Rod demanded.

Alejandro shrugged. “Not like you left us much choice.”

“Fuck that for an explanation!”

“See, since you made me leader, bro, I don’t gotta explain myself to you no more. You left. You ab-di-ca-ted.” He enunciated the word, punctuating each syllable with a flick of his index finger. “I don’t owe you no explanation. Only reason I’m giving you anything is ‘cause I want you to know what you did to your bros when you left to take care of just yourself.”

“I left you in charge –”

“That’s right; you did. And I made a decision about the situation you left us in.”

“You mean you betrayed the Rage Riders.”

Alejandro’s expression became murderous. If Rod had been a more timid guy, he might have taken a step back at the shot of pure venom. “You wanna talk to me about betrayal? Do you really wanna go there? _Really_?”

“I never betrayed you –”

“The hell you didn’t! You abandoned the gang. You walked out on us because we weren’t enough for you anymore. You promised to protect the boys and then you just left to suit yourself. Call me crazy, but that sounds like betrayal to me.”

“I left you in charge,” Rod insisted. “You were there from the beginning. You knew as much as I ever did about running things.”

“But nobody else believed in me.”

“The boys –”

“That’s not who I meant. We both know my rep wasn’t worth shit compared to yours. It wasn’t just knowing how to swing a bike chain or fire a gun that kept us safe from outsiders; it was the name that went with it. _Your_ name, Rodriguez. Everyone knew not to mess with you. The big gangs, they’re feuding all the time. We both know that. We grew up seeing it, didn’t we? You remember growing up with me, _bro_? You remember all the times we shared as kids? You remember the cycle of all gangs – the Bloodbaths, the Acid Tongues, the Keepers? No matter the name, they all ended up doing the same thing in the end. They always tried to recruit smaller outfits like us to pad out their numbers when they lost too many of their own in fights. Remember?”

“I remember,” Rod said flatly.

“Your rep kept them away from us. As long as they knew you’d bust the heads of anyone who tried to absorb the Rage Riders, nobody tried. And then suddenly, poof, you weren’t there anymore. Did you think they wouldn’t find out? After you left to join Shinra, guess who came calling? And they weren’t taking no for an answer no more.”

“They would’ve if you’d said it hard enough. I wasn’t special. You could’ve done the same as I did and _shown_ them the Rage Riders weren’t for sale.”

Alejandro laughed and shook his head. “Never thought I’d hear you sound so naïve. What do you care, anyhow? You left. How’ve you been finding life as a Shinra lapdog? Or should I say,” he curled his mouth around the word like he was being asked to taste turpentine, “ _Shinra’s bitch_?” He tossed his head. For a street-rat, Alejandro had pretty good hair. Soft brown and wavy, it moved like something out of a shampoo commercial. He was always tossing it about when making a point. When did that start? Rod had memories of them shaving each other’s heads when they got lice as kids, and laughing at how ridiculous they looked. Other than that and staying free of gang-tatts, appearances hadn’t been much of an issue for Rod. He never got into that ‘gotta be buff to get girls’ mind-set. Maybe that was because just staying alive turned his muscles solid and his long body trimmer than gym bunnies from above the Plate.

Alejandro, on the other hand, always seemed aware of every inch of himself as he moved. He had nursed a suspicion of being seen as weak and done his damndest to appear tough while they were teenagers. He had dressed to impress and played the part of the young gangbanger to the hilt. Even now he was dressed in leather, spiked wristbands and thick steel-toed biker boots. A bright red bandana sat loosely around his neck and a single stud glittered in one ear. It wasn’t a diamond, but glass often sparkled more because it had more to prove.

His tone was calculatingly spiteful. “Did you know that your Turk friends iced one of your old bros just last week?”

“What?”

“But then why would you care, right?” Alejandro shrugged. “We ain’t your bros no more. Your boys ain’t your boys.”

Rod’s mind bubbled with lava-hot anger. “You can’t pin that on me. I left you in charge. What I did wasn’t anything special. The bigger gangs listened to me because I didn’t give no ground and always did what had to be done to _make_ ‘em respect me. Like you said, we were kids together. You know I didn’t have no superpowers or special connections; I just sent the right message to the right people and let the rest take care of itself. You remember the recruiter I sent back to the Bloodbaths when the Rage Riders first started?”

“I remember,” Alejandro said softly. His eyes shone with memories, and perhaps something more. “You sent him back in pieces. On film.”

Rod had committed a single act of conscious, outsized cruelty and violence to seal his rep. It had been distasteful and made even his stomach lurch to remember, but there had been a need in order to stop further bloodshed – his boys’ blood in particular. The Bloodbaths were a gang with a name that was more of a description. There was no way Rod was going to let the Rage Riders become a part of them, but the recruiter had refused to take no for an answer. Rod had thrown him out of the building they made their home at the time, only to find the guy in the alley outside leaving a message in the shape of Alejandro’s dead body. Alejandro still had the scar on his stomach where the recruiter had slashed him. Rod had heard the scuffle, stepped in and seen with a predator’s simplicity that he needed to send a message of his own.

He had documented it. Alejandro had helped him get the unconscious man inside and down to the basement. Then Rod had locked himself in alone with the guy and, using a stolen phone, taken photos and videoed what came next. It had been disgusting, but Rod had used the footage and the message it gave to fortify the Rage Riders’ against anyone looking to intimidate them: _The is what happens if you try to recruit us_. He distributed them to the underground network and waited for the message to spread. Such a small gang wasn’t worth the amount of aggro it would take to get them. As long as they didn’t step on anyone else’s toes or make any enemies, the bigger gangs were content to leave them alone. Rod wasn’t proud of what he had done. He had never told anyone about the nightmares that followed, or the unclean feeling he got when handling blades of any sort. It was one of the reasons he now preferred blunt weapons or hand-to-hand. He had done it because it was necessary.

Growing up homeless on the streets of Midgar was tough. You grew up fast or you didn’t grow up at all. That was what Rod had always believed. It was what had made Veld look twice at the punk who tried to lift a prototype model motorcycle from Shinra’s workshop so he could copy its design and trick out bikes for those who brought them to him for repairs. Rod did what was necessary to get the job done, even if it was unpleasant. He was perfect Turk material.

The Bloodbaths were eventually absorbed into the Red Fangs. The few surviving members had spread word of the little biker gang and their ruthless leader. Rumour always elaborated the truth, so Rod had never had to be quite so vicious again, or so public. One death wasn’t out of the ordinary in the part of Sector Six where they lived, but Rod had made himself out to be the best and used that as a yardstick until he really was. He had thought Alejandro was smart enough to do the same.

Apparently not. Apparently Alejandro had taken the easier path and ended up as cannon fodder for someone else’s gang. Now things had gone wrong, he had shifted responsibility onto the absent Rod and convinced the other Rage Riders it was Rod’s fault they’d lost their identity, their home, and probably their hope of hitting thirty.

Rod’s hand clenched around his gun. He hadn’t put it away and had no intention of doing so. This wasn’t the Alejandro he had known. This wasn’t the guy with whom he had shared food when one of them had picked enough pockets to eat and the other hadn’t. This wasn’t the guy who had saved enough to take him to the Honeybee on his sixteenth birthday. Alejandro had changed. So had Rod.

“If you’d just held your ground, they’d have respected you and left you alone,” Rod said.

Alejandro snorted. “You really believe that?”

Rod wasn’t sure, but he had to convince himself, and if he couldn’t, he had to fake it. He straightened his spine, even though he was still feeling the effects of the medical treatment after the cherry bomb incident. “Whatever happened, it’s on your head, Alejandro, not mine.”

“No way, dude.” Alejandro shook his head. “It’s on _yours_. And the boys? They want to pay you back for it, Turk or no Turk.”

“And you don’t?”

He shrugged.

Rod scowled. “Whatever happened after I left, it wasn’t my responsibility.”

“You built the Rage Riders. _Everything_ that happens to them is your responsibility.”

“And none of it’s yours?”

“I’m already taking my lumps,” Alejandro said bitterly.

“Rod? Where’d you go?” called a voice from the street: Sandan, his partner while Naifu was being reprimanded. “Rodriguez?”

Rod didn’t take his eyes off Alejandro.

“Watch your back, _bro_ ,” his old friend said as he faded into the shadows. “You can be sure we will.”

Rod stayed on his guard every step out of that alley.

“There you are!” Sandan cried. She bobbed up to him, sweeping bits of her long brown ponytail from her mouth. What was it with Turks and unsuitable hairstyles? And inappropriate nicknames, too. “Darling, if you needed to step out for a moment, there are perfectly usable facilities in the restaurants two streets over. You didn’t need to use a,” she wrinkled her nose, “brick wall. Phew, it smells like every dog in the neighbourhood uses this one.”

“Whatever.” Rod pushed past her, head too full and chest heavier than it had ever been.

He remembered the time he’d had pneumonia and the Rage Riders had been forced to cope without him while he recovered. They had pulled their jobs, stealing bikes and scavenging parts to rebuild and revamp whatever customers’ brought them. Alejandro had been smoking hot back then, bringing in more than anyone else and cutting deals for classic motorcycles beyond anything anyone else could do. Rod had been insane with jealousy. That competence and talent had convinced him that Alejandro was a good choice to replace him as leader when he joined the Turks.

Something prickled at the base of his brain. Anger? Disappointment? Betrayal? He had never felt guilty before. He couldn’t recognise it.

“Darling?” Sandan caught up to him. “Did something happen that I should know about? We have to be alert, now more than ever.”

She was talking about the mess left by Sephiroth’s passing, and the fact the general public weren’t being given the whole story, but Rod interpreted her words differently.

“Fuck off, will you? Let’s just get this fucking patrol over with and get the fuck back above the Plate.”

“Well.” Sandan folded her arms primly. “ _Someone_ rolled out of the wrong side of bed this morning.”


	31. Cissnei: Tutor

Cissnei didn’t request guard-duty over Zack’s girlfriend. Given the choice, she probably wouldn’t have chosen to do it. She’d done surveillance of the Cetra girl before, but that was a long time ago, before Zack even made the SOLDIER programme. Back then Aerith Gainsborough had been just another of Shinra’s background research projects, albeit one with more baggage and a different setting than the usual laboratory. Cissnei remembered Aerith as a gangly pre-teen, all knees and elbows, who shook her head when Tseng asked her to give herself up willingly, and then took shelter in a dilapidated church like it could protect her.

When Cissnei saw her next, however, Aerith was quite different. She’d grown up, and Zack had been there in the church with her. Technically, as Shinra employees, neither he nor Cissnei were supposed to be there. Zack, at least, could claim ignorance about Aerith’s Cetra heritage. Cissnei, on the other hand, had no such excuse.

It was frowned upon to track Shinra’s own unless you’d been ordered to. She could give no good reason for trailing Zack below the Plate, except ...

Except nothing. Zack was a case worth keeping an eye on after the business with Project G. At the time Cissnei had refused to acknowledge the why of her own behaviour, especially when she observed the pair going into Sector Five to _sell flowers_ , of all things.

A SOLDIER First Class selling flowers in the bowels of Midgar? The idea was so surreal it went beyond laughable. Could Cetra manipulate minds or something? Cissnei knew only what she’d been told about that project, and she’d never wanted to know more. Wanting to know more than you were supposed to was deadly in Shinra.

Sometimes she thought the same could be said of being too human in the Turks.

She’d actually been wistful as she watched Aerith and Zack hug, talk, and do the kinds of things normal couples did, despite being anything but normal. Then she’d caught herself and stowed the wistfulness where it couldn’t impede her judgement. A Turk had no business being wistful about anything, especially not relationships that weren’t purely functional or too strained to ever work.

The life of a Turk was defined by its approach to hope. Turks were the product of Midgar as much as the sludge on the streets and the smoke that belched from Shinra’s stacks. To Midgar and to a Turk, false hope was worse than no hope at all, and the kind of life bred here offered only the falsest. Once you accepted hope was an elaborate hoax, and that life really wasn’t much more than this, you were a Midgarder. Once you crystallised your mind enough to see the bigger picture beyond mere hope, you were on your way to being a Turk. Once you were able to _use_ false hopes as just another means of getting the job done, that was when you were a _true_ Turk, not just a schmuck in a suit.

Cissnei had been a Turk almost as long as she could remember. She not only had no business being wistful, she had no right.

And yet …

Zack Fair. SOLDIER First Class. Formerly of Gongaga. Mentee of Angeal Hewley. Terminated the fugitive Hewley and now carried his sword. Second in Command to General Sephiroth. Cissnei’s brain ticked over with his vital stats and pertinent bits of information. The problem was, these didn’t make up the whole. The Zack Fair on paper was not the Zack Fair of real life.

Actually, the _real_ problem was that she’d begun to see a difference between the two, and that was dangerous.

They both worked for Shinra. They’d both killed people in its name. Zack, however, still managed to retain that strange sense of honour that meant the blood on his hands wasn’t as visible as the stains on her own.

Maybe it was his commitment to this honour. Maybe it was the fact he refused to become just a killing machine. Maybe it was that damnable way he had of making you forget he’d been trained to slice people up with that sword – _including his own mentor_. It happened in different settings – him in war-torn Wutai, her in Midgar back alleys – but Zack Fair was as much a murderer as Cissnei, yet he wore it so you’d never know. Cissnei could put on a fancy dress to go incognito at a formal Shinra event, and still feel blood caked under her nails and drying in her hair from arterial spray she’d washed off weeks, months, even years ago. Zack Fair could walk through Sector Five in a SOLDIER uniform, fully armed, and look innocent as a newborn baby. He still trusted. He’d been betrayed multiple times, seen and done terrible things, and yet he still _trusted_. He still believed in people’s basic goodness; that someone could be redeemed long past the point Cissnei would have buried Rekka in their heart.

She’d wanted that. Not the foolish trust – that was just an easy way of getting yourself killed – but the underlying part. She’d refused to acknowledge it, even as she lurked in the shadows like a freaking _stalker_ , but she’d wanted that ability of his: to fit in without giving up who he really was.

She still wanted it years later, after he vanished and the void where he used to be gave rise to unwelcome thoughts about why she missed him when they’d hardly been close friends. A Turk didn’t have friends who weren’t Turks, because only another Turk could understand what the job asked of you. What it demanded you become.

Zack was a SOLDIER, but that wasn’t all of him. Somehow, despite everything, he’d managed to remain an optimist. He hadn’t allowed the job to eat him alive, the way you had to let it take over when you were a Turk – at least if you wanted to survive.

As the years passed, she started to wonder where Cissnei the Turk ended and her true self began. Compartmentalising only worked when you didn’t allow the segments of your life to spill over into each other. She used to be able to take off Cissnei when she took off the suit and thought of herself by her real name, but it was getting harder and harder.

Tseng looked like he’d been born in a suit. His hair got longer and he stopped tying it into an efficient little ponytail, but you still couldn’t mistake him for anything but a Turk. Was she getting that way too? On the Costa del Sol she’d worn a bikini, but still answered to Cissnei. Had it already been too late back then, when Zack was still around?

Now Zack was MIA and Cissnei wasn’t sure what to think anymore. Figuring it out was made all the more difficult when Tseng gave her this detail and refused to listen when she protested. She was to watch the Cetra girl. Moreover she was to _watch out_ for her. End of story.

Maybe it was the promise Tseng had given to Zack, to watch over Aerith for him. Or maybe Tseng’s own feelings for Aerith were what had motivated the order. He had to know about Cissnei’s attachment to Zack, and he certainly knew about Zack’s relationship with Aerith. Tseng was a canny bastard and ruthless about how he used that – something he fully acknowledged. There was very little he didn’t know, and even less he said about it. If he’d set Cissnei to watch Aerith, he probably knew it would eventually become watching over something precious of Zack’s, and that getting close to Aerith was like getting close to someone who’d left an imprint on your psyche like a handprint in dough. The Zack Fair on paper wasn’t the Zack Fair of real life, and the Zack Fair of Cissnei’s memories wasn’t the same one Aerith had known. What better way to ensure the girl was protected as well as watched, than to tail her with someone who had a personal stake in her wellbeing? Albeit an extremely screwed-up one.

Cissnei had a vested interest in keeping Aerith alive. Wherever Zack was, he would come back to this girl. Cissnei didn’t fool herself that _she_ meant more to Zack than any of his other friends, but her profiler training told her he’d move mountains to return to Aerith if he was still alive.

Likewise, Cissnei knew Aerith’s intuition was more accurate than any of the drivel reports Shinra passed down about not knowing where those of the Nibelheim mission had gone. Those reports were falser than a trophy wife’s breasts. A clandestine Turk report, unbeknownst to the higher-ups, said Sephiroth had gone crazy, attacked his own people, and been taken out by a lowly infantryman with a lot of guts and even more luck. At the General’s time of death, Zack had been alive, but afterwards been transported to parts unknown, and even the Turk information network had failed to locate him since then. In the absence of any concrete evidence to the contrary, Aerith believed Zack was still alive, so Cissnei believed it too.

She watched Aerith from wherever the shadows were deepest – the cage-like lattice roof beams, the top of a nearby building, somewhere people couldn’t see and so wouldn’t recognise the suit. It was difficult, so she tried watching her in civvies, which gave her more freedom to hide in crowds, but left a nasty taste in her mouth and eroded the boundaries of those internal compartments a little more. She went back to the suit the very next shift, and kept wearing it for each after that.

And then, just over a month after Zack was officially listed as missing, Aerith vanished as well.

Cissnei was angry enough to spit acid. It had happened while she wasn’t on duty – the surveillance was shared between three of them – but for some reason she still felt responsible, as if she was the one who’d screwed up.

“There’s no way she could just disappear.” She was firm. “We find her. Immediately.”

“She could’ve left the city,” said Juu.

“Without us noticing?” demanded Tama.

Juu turned her calm grey eyes on him. “Without _you_ noticing.”

Tama’s jaw tightened. He’d been on duty when it happened. If anything really had happened to Aerith, his head was the one that would roll. Or so he thought in his little greenhorn mind.

Actually, Cissnei knew it was all their heads on the chopping block. Both Tseng and the Shinra higher-ups wanted to keep hold of Aerith – or keep Aerith on hold until she was profitable enough to be interesting again.

“We find her,” she said again. “We canvass the area. We don’t stop until we know her current location.”

“Possibly in some alley with a knife between her ribs,” Juu said under her breath.

Cissnei put no inflection in her voice. “For all our sakes, you’d better hope not.”

“Her mother’s still in Midgar,” Tama said hopefully. He was a new recruit – they both were. He and Juu made Cissnei feel old when the smooth skin in the mirror told her otherwise.

“Would she leave her mother behind if she left the city?” Juu mused.

“Depends,” said Cissnei. “If she thought taking her along would endanger her, then maybe. Or maybe she didn’t get a choice in the matter. Start with the mother, Juu. Stake out the house and report anything significant or suspicious. It’s possible we’re talking kidnap, not voluntary departure. Tama, check security footage of the city boundaries.”

“What, all of it?”

Cissnei didn’t bother to reply, just levelled a look at him that Reno once called Mother Hen Gone Bad.

Tama backed off. “Yes, Cissnei.”

Cissnei.

Cissnei, Cissnei, Cissnei …

Was there anyone alive except herself and Tseng who knew her real name anymore?

_I want him to know_. The thought arrived in her mind without warning and fully formed, as if someone else had placed it there. She was shocked – and again when she realised it wasn’t a lie. Of all the people in the world, she wanted Zack Fair to know the truth of the woman behind the Turk. She wanted to hear him call her by her real name. She wanted someone like him, someone genuinely _good_ , to understand her.

Or maybe not. Maybe what she actually wanted was redemption, and there were few enough people in Midgar capable of giving it as it was, now Zack was gone. Aerith was a good person, too.

She realised Juu and Tama were still watching and mentally shook herself. Sentimental twaddle. Aerith was part of the job, nothing more, and Cissnei was nothing if not good at her job. “Fine. Move out.”


	32. Reno: Spectator

“You’re sure?” Tseng’s voice didn’t change. Anyone else might have climbed an octave, or at least injected a little surprise. Not Tsengy-boy. His po-face didn’t slip a notch.

Cissnei nodded. “Absolutely.”

Reno tilted his head at her. He’d always sort of fancied her, but Cissnei was one of those look-but-don’t-touch women. It wasn’t anything she did, since she wasn’t a badass in the traditional sense. She was dangerous – hell yeah – but she coupled that with a weird mildness totally at odds with her ability to throw a shuriken the size of Don Corneo’s ego. It was just a vibe she gave off; even when she smiled, or brushed aside her hair, or you heard her talk and realised being a Turk hadn’t roughened her voice. Cissnei was a badass, but a sexy badass. Nobody got away with anything around her unless they wanted broken fingers – something he knew after a badly-timed grope when she was young and he was younger. Veld had refused him a Cure Spell for an entire duty shift, during which he had been in three fights and had his ass kicked in all three. The humiliation was devastating. He had never tried to touch her fun-bags again.

Tseng stared at the report on his desk. Reno didn’t bother to hide his sigh. Nobody expected him to. They didn’t even acknowledge his theatrics, which was galling. What did a guy have to do to get a little attention around here?

Die, apparently. Or go crazy. Or both. But that was another story.

“Do Juu and Tama know?” Tseng asked.

“I did their observations myself,” Cissnei replied.

“Do they know?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She stared at him. Reno raised an eyebrow. Rude, as ever, was unreadable.

“What next?” Cissnei said at last. Her eyes flickered to Reno and Rude, as if wary about them listening when this mission wasn’t even their brief.

Reno was also surprised to be called in. True, the two butterballs Cissnei had been partnered with were lacking experience, but it wasn’t Tseng’s style to interfere with the line-up once he had chosen it. Reno and Rude weren’t exactly at a loose end, either. After the desertions by First Class Rhapsodos and First Class Hewley, plus this whole Nibelheim fiasco, there were officially _no_ First Class SOLDIERs left. Tseng had briefed them to dispel the growing panic in Midgar before it exploded and made the higher-ups do something stupid. Preventative medicine was sometimes better than curative, even if looking for potential amongst the trainees who could be fast-tracked to assuage the tension was tedious in the extreme. Those kids were so _intense_. Reno felt like telling them they’d be selected for SOLDIER if they passed one final test, then taking them below-Plate, to the Honeybee or someplace, just to see their faces and laugh.

Then Tseng told them what he wanted them to do, and it struck Reno that sometimes reality echoed fantasy in weird ways.

“Been a while since we worked together, huh, sugar-lips?”

She rolled her eyes. “Your patter hasn’t improved.”

“Aw, don’t be that way, Ciss. At least you’re on point.”

“I’m jumping up and down inside. Really. Head of a team with a slacker and a slab of granite in sunglasses.”

“You gonna take that from her, Rude?”

“She’s in charge,” Rude deadpanned. “And you are a slacker.”

Cissnei smothered a snigger. She did it delicately, but it was still there. Reno wondered how much she’d laughed with her previous partners. He was so used to being one of a pair with Rude, it felt odd deferring to a third person. Cissnei, on the other hand, seemed grateful to be away from the newbies; which was odd, given she was the one who usually showed most concern over fresh meat not becoming _dead_ meat. Either Juu and Tama were irritating as hell (a distinct possibility, since they’d managed to lose their target so easily and let it _stay_ lost this long), or Cissnei had stuff on her mind.

Ah, well, at least they’d located the missing girl. And to tell the truth, their destination now was _so_ much more preferable to another jaunt amongst the SOLDIER wannabes.

“C’mon, admit it.” He slung an arm around Cissnei’s shoulders. “You missed me.”

“True,” Cissnei replied sweetly, “but my aim has improved.”


	33. Hojo: Salvager

Hojo surveyed the man before him and sighed. The sigh seemed to start in his shoes and work its way up. Really, it was most unfortunate that a mind like his was constantly beset by such _trivialities_. Couldn’t these people see he was occupied with something more important than this ridiculous question and answer session?

“Surely one of my researchers would suffice in my place?” He drummed his fingers on the table.

“This won’t take long, Professor.” The man’s tone was appropriately courteous but Hojo still had a sense of being ordered about by a subordinate. It chafed. He wasn’t some two-bit scientist who could be shunted from pillar to post at the whims of others. “We’re very grateful for your cooperation in this matter, since you were so heavily involved with Project S.”

He stopped drumming to link his hands under his chin. “I’m glad to hear it. However, if you’re so grateful, it does beg the question of why you’re keeping me waiting.”

As if on cue another man entered with a manila folder that the interviewer accepted wordlessly. He shuffled through a few sheets of paper – was this a pathetic attempt at intimidation or did he genuinely not care _who_ he was annoying? – before focussing again on Hojo.

“You were present during the Nibelheim Incident last month, Professor?”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Hojo was bored and saw no reason to hide it. Many things bored him, especially paper-pushers and their bureaucracy. He itched to get back to the lab but had been prohibited until he agreed to this. Since he needed President Shinra’s cooperation for the foreseeable future it had seemed a small sacrifice.

His interviewer didn’t reply. Evidently he was waiting for Hojo to say more.

Hojo sighed. “Yes, I was present. Is there a point to all this?”

“You actually observed what happened?”

“No, but I was there for the immediate aftermath.”

“You are aware of General Sephiroth’s actions during that time?”

Hojo’s irritation mounted. “Am I to understand I’ve been summoned from some extremely sensitive research – and by sensitive I mean _time_ -sensitive, as well as too delicate to leave in the hands of the ham-fisted assistants you assigned me –” He paused for breath. “Am I to understand you have brought me all the way to Midgar just to establish things that could have been ascertained _over a phone_?”

His interviewer’s lips thinned.

Hojo leaned back in his chair. “I see.”

The man tapped the manila file. “These are financial records. Equipment requests. Documents filled out by your department in the last month.”

“I’m sure they make fascinating reading.”

“They do.” A spark of something unpleasant appeared in the interviewer’s dark eyes. Hojo hadn’t got where he was today by ignoring warning signs but he continued to feign boredom. “In the last month you’ve transferred a great deal of equipment to the Nibelheim facility, as well as reassigning key members of your staff to your new venture.”

“It was rather underequipped, yes, and I prefer to work with people whose credentials I -” Hojo skinned back his teeth to pronounce the word like an insult. “- trust. Did Shinra expect me to work with substandard apparatus for all eternity? I think not. Not if they want accuracy and precision.”

“This new venture was commissioned just after the Nibelheim Incident.”

“Your precious records show that too?”

“Nibelheim was burned to the ground during the Incident.”

“Tragic, I’m sure. The gene pool weeps for the loss of hairy mountain men.”

“Its inhabitants were all lost.” There was that spark again. Hojo’s spine tingled but he didn’t straighten in his chair. That would be giving too much away. “According to the records. Official reports list the death rate as a hundred percent.”

“What do you want me to say? My heart bleeds for the poor inbred troglodytes and their uncivilised frozen backwater. Truly. Is there a point to all this?”

“You’ve abandoned all your projects here in Midgar to move to the Nibelheim Lab.”

“Not abandoned,” Hojo corrected. “Put on temporary hiatus. I never truly lose interest in a project until I’ve seen it to its conclusion, however long that might take.”

This time the interviewer stiffened – not that anyone could tell. Hojo, however, noted the slight dilation of pupils, the immediate downward tick of that dark gaze and the way several of the man’s blinks were a lot closer together. What had him rattled now? He wondered whether that bore further investigation. Which project, he wondered, was of interest to _this_ man? Vincent Valentine and the Chaos Project, perhaps? No, that was too long ago. Plenty of opportunities had already passed if Turk investigations were headed in that direction – opportunities not choked by politics and fear, which had flooded all of Shinra after the news of Sephiroth’s violent psychosis.

Hojo flicked through mental records far more accurate and complete than any written ones he had submitted to Shinra. Yet his mind went back to the Nibelheim facility. He ached to be there at such a crucial stage. Like all artists, his first flush of enthusiasm was always strongest and this time it was especially potent. It was powered not only by his natural curiosity, his desire to _know_ more than anyone else did or could, but also by the frustration and rage at losing Sephiroth. Even more than the desecration of Jenova, Sephiroth’s defeat lit a fire inside him. He had worked long and hard to create the perfect life form; too long to let it go without a fight or retribution. There was a delicious irony that the subjects he had been left with would provide both, if only he could get back to them.

“Shinra is aware of my move and support me fully. My new branch of research is, as I have already said, quite time-sensitive and demanded an immediate relocation of resources for optimal results. You’ll find all the requisite _paperwork_ ,” he said the word with a wave at the file, and laced with a sneer, the way other people would say ‘cat vomit’, “filed with the right people and departments.”

“The right people,” his interviewer repeated. “Hm.”

“Are you implying something?”

“General Sephiroth’s remains were never found, were they?”

Hojo stiffened. Shinra’s official voice still listed Sephiroth as MIA, along with all the other inferiors he’d been with during the confrontation in the Nibelheim Reactor. He knew, however, that they were a hair’s breadth from declaring them dead along with the rest of Nibelheim, despite the lack of bodies. No small amount of pressure from Hojo himself had pushed them to pass the death certificates earlier than usual. He wanted interest in Nibelheim squashed. As long as a question mark hung over Sephiroth’s death people would remain interested. His work would be much easier without the interference an investigation by the wrong people – like Turks.

“Do you know something I don’t?” Hojo asked mildly.

“That would defeat the object of conducting this line of questioning, Professor.”

“Many words that say very little. The General’s body is still an issue, yes. The bodies of his subordinates …” Hojo shrugged. “They weren’t the Silver General. They’re of lesser importance whichever way you look at it.”

“SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair was the Second in Command for the mission, wasn’t he?”

“I believe so.”

“Have you recovered his remains?”

Hojo spent a moment considering his answer. Ah well, no time like the present. “Yes. His body has been recovered. It is, however, in a condition that renders it impossible to return to his family.” Not that Shinra would have done if Fair really had died. Release forms signed at the outset of the SOLDIER programme were full of provisos in small and smaller print. SOLDIERs were too precious for their usefulness to end when their lives did. The things he could have learned from Sephiroth’s genetic material post-mortem! He burned with the injustice of losing that data. He had already learned so much from Hewley and Hollander’s results, but Project G’s failure was nothing compared to the perfection and success of his own Project S.

The interviewer said nothing. He didn’t query the remark but the air suddenly suggested there were unasked questions lurking like rakes in tall grass.

Rather than step on one, Hojo said, “You want to ask me what I mean by that, don’t you?”

“Would you explain?”

“Mako is still something of an unknown force in its rawest form. Its effects haven’t been fully catalogued and have a tendency to respond to variables and outside factors that act upon bodies during exposure – as has happened each time some fool attempts to fill in the blanks, catalogue the undocumented side-effects and ends up getting themselves killed with mako poisoning. Pre-existing genetic proclivities; prior contact with mako, whether internally or externally; the physical condition of a body at time of exposure; the amount of raw-form mako involved and the method of exposure – do tell me if I’m going too fast for you. Or perhaps you’d like me to explain the bigger words?” His smile was a terrible thing and he knew it.

“Proceed, Professor.”

“Damage to organic material can be quite extensive and perilous for those who come into contact with it afterwards, as in the case of First Class Fair and his lackeys.”

“Their bodies are radioactive?”

“Nuclear fusion. How quaint. I wasn’t aware anybody even thought about such a thing anymore, much less referred to it in context.”

“I’ll rephrase.”

“You do that.”

“Are you saying that the remains of First Class Zack Fair come under the classification ‘hazardous biological waste’?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Hence, they will be disposed of safely and in controlled conditions, once proper tests have been run to establish that whatever affected his mind enough to attack General Sephiroth _wasn’t_ connected with his mako injections and _won’t_ happen again to any other SOLDIERs.”

The interviewer’s head jerked up. “ _He_ attacked the General?”

“Of course. You thought it was the other way around?” Hojo smirked. “A surprise attack, naturally. How else could someone as powerful as General Sephiroth be defeated by an inferior model?” He laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me any unenhanced grunt could take on a First Class and win.”

Damn it, there was that spark again. It flared to life at the words ‘inferior model’. As though _this_ cretin had any right to think of the unwashed masses as anything other than bodies to be spent how their superiors saw fit? Society hadn’t evolved as much as it liked to think. It was still survival of the fittest. How much blood was on this man’s hands? Hojo forcibly calmed himself and returned the stare.

His interviewer seemed to be waiting for something. Then he nodded; an abrupt up and down of the head that meant nothing except a visual a full stop to the conversation. “Thank you, Professor. You’ve been most helpful.”

“And you’ve been most irritating,” Hojo replied. “This entire interview has been unnecessary; a waste of my time and Shinra’s resources.”

A lesser person might have been cowed by his annoyance. Not this one. He offered no apology, just more polite thanks and the promise of a chopper to return Hojo to Nibelheim immediately.

“The least you can do, considering the trouble you’ve put me to,” Hojo grumbled.

Still, he reflected, it had been worth it if it prevented a Turk investigation of what had really happened in Nibelheim. There may have been interest there, but he was sure Tseng had gotten the message: it was more than his life was worth to look too deeply at the Nibelheim Incident, just as it had always been too risky for anyone to look too deeply into Valentine’s desertion. Tseng wasn’t stupid. Stupidly loyal to his employers, but not brainless enough to take on an enemy he couldn’t possibly defeat. Hojo had more might behind him than that nosy idiot. Plus, Shinra was panicking at the loss of its figurehead. If word got out that Sephiroth had turned on them … well, they just wouldn’t let that happen. If Shinra ordered it, Tseng would have to stop even _thinking_ about Nibelheim, much less looking into it.

All knowledge of Zack Fair and his team would be buried on Shinra’s orders, Hojo was sure, and all interest in them as well. The last thing he needed was Tseng and his batch of well-tailored psychopaths getting in the way while he salvaged what he could of his beloved Project S.


	34. Cissnei: Covert Operator

“You want me to _what_?” Cissnei’s voice hit a note to shatter glass.

“We’ve no choice,” said Tseng. “They’re covering everything up as fast as they can.”

“There’s always a choice. We _make_ choices if there aren’t any. It’s what we do.” She recalled something Reno once said to Veld. It was typically disrespectful, as was most of what came out of his mouth, but hit the nail on the head in this case – in any situation there was Option A, Option B, Option C and Option Turk. Cissnei remembered how that actually got a smile from Veld. “We’re the Department of Administrative Research. Information is what we _do_.” Along with kidnappings, assassinations, clean-ups nobody else wanted and cover-ups nobody else could perform.

Except right now, apparently, when Shinra was doing its best to steal their thunder – and their right to the truth.

“It’s all going to be suppressed, Cissnei. Even,” Tseng said darkly, “from us. Heidegger is already making noises for us to back off. They don’t want any of the real story getting out. Even the fake story is only going to be allowed limited shelf life. It’s going to be swept under the carpet as soon as possible – a forcibly forgotten embarrassment.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Anger boiled inside her and she didn’t want to say something she’d later regret. She wasn’t Reno. Her regrets stuck around longer than it took to escape the occupant of a bed in the morning. Heidegger was a subject that still stuck in the craws of most Turks. On top of what was now going on concerning Nibelheim, the mere mention of him was enough to have Cissnei’s blood boiling.

“Hojo’s spinning enough lies that Shinra is running scared. They know Zack didn’t attack Sephiroth unprovoked, even if the two of them did fight. Our operative gave us an inside view on what really happened out there, but Shinra isn’t interested in that anymore. The documents have already been purged. It’s all about damage control now – just like in Banora. Sephiroth was so high profile that this is a huge blow for the company. Hojo’s using that. To what end, I’m not sure, but he’s in the thick of it, controlling them all with their own panic to ensure _he_ gets what _he_ wants.”

“Self-seeking son of a -” Cissnei stopped herself, trying to calm down. It wasn’t working. The cracks were beginning to show. “Anyone who’s met Zack would know this is too ridiculous for words. Next they’ll be trying to pass everything off as some giant accident. A stray lightning bolt that torched the whole town, somehow destroyed the most powerful warrior on the planet, and conveniently killed all witnesses.”

Tseng regarded her with folded arms. “The witnesses aren’t all dead.”

Cissnei was confused. She’d been confused when Tseng summoned her alone to see him, confused when he told her what he wanted her to do, and was getting progressively more confused the more he tried to explain. Tseng was shrewd, but he was so busy thinking three steps ahead of the game, other players trying to follow him sometimes tripped over their own feet. In a lot of ways he was still trying to impress Veld, although he’d cut off his tongue before admitting it.

Cissnei centred herself by concentrating on the perfectly straight lines of Tseng’s eyebrows. “Nibelheim was torched.”

“Yes.”

“There were no survivors.”

“None listed.” He gave her what was for him an arch look, as if to say ‘you know better than that’.

And she did. She cursed her own naïveté. “That _bastard_ Hojo.” Fury rose inside her like a column of fire.

She sucked in a breath and held it, compelling her inner turmoil to quieten, but it was no use. Nobody who’d met Hojo could possibly like him. Nobody who’d seen him work could be anything but disgusted by him. Cissnei was aware the Turks’ ethical code was skewed, but Hojo’s was non-existent. He had no concept of loyalty to anyone or anything except his own ego, and possessed the pitilessness of a shark when making sure whatever garbage he dived into, he always ended up at the top of the heap. And now he had Zack, and practically the higher-ups permission to make him disappear …

“That’s why you have to go.” Tseng was talking again. Cissnei refocused on him.

“No. You can’t send me away. Not now.”

“I’m not sending you away,” Tseng said in a maddeningly reasonable tone. “I’m giving you your orders. This is your assignment. Are you refusing to do your job?”

“You know that’s not it.”

He just looked at her.

For the first time since she was a little kid, before the Turks recruited her, Cissnei had a powerful urge to stamp her foot. It was almost more shocking than anything else that had happened lately.

“What would you do?” Tseng asked coolly. “Hop a ride to Nibelheim to follow his trail to wherever they’ve taken him? Maths isn’t beyond you, Cissnei.”

_One Turk plus one injured SOLDIER versus all of Shinra equals …_

Cissnei clenched her jaw. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the best one for this.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“I wasn’t aware I had to explain my actions to subordinates.”

She narrowed her eyes. _Do you think I really will run after Zack and get myself killed if you don’t keep me occupied? You can’t think so little of me. You know me, Tseng. You know me better than that._

Tseng’s expression didn’t change, but he said, “Because I know you’ll do everything in your power to preserve the objective. Nobody else would be more dedicated in this task.”

For some reason that hurt. She trusted Tseng with her life – had done so on many occasions, and vice versa. Now he was unapologetically manoeuvring her into a position she didn’t want to be in, insulting her into the bargain, and she suspected at least one layer of his personal motives for doing all this. He was using her feelings against her, which was worse than the fact he’d figured them out in the first place. She’d never covered up her flirting with Zack, but to everyone else that was all it had been; just harmless flirting, forgotten as soon as the handsome First Class was out of sight. Tseng, however, had seen through that. Now he was using it like any other weapon in their arsenal of information.

It was that rat bastard cunning of his at work again – the reason behind him setting her on that initial surveillance detail, and sending her to that whorehouse when Aerith went missing. Of _course_ Tseng had known it was an all-female place, and of _course_ he’d known the make-up of personalities and histories of the women there would make them hostile towards men like Reno and Rude. Reno was known to frequent establishments like that off the clock, though still in the suit, and taciturn men like Rude couldn’t help but generate a brutish reputation after a while of not bothering to correct people. Tseng had also known how those women would be much more receptive to a woman, and especially to a woman whom Reno and Rude deferred to – a woman whose outfit said she was too competent not to be taken seriously, but whose hair and breathy voice bespoke approachability. Cissnei admired Tseng’s craftiness as much as she disliked it being used on her. No wonder he was leader of the Turks at such a relatively young age.

“Preserve the objective?” she echoed. “Can we at least do away with the policy-speak?”

“All right. I know you’ll do everything in your power to keep her safe. You’re smart, committed, and experienced. You’ve been in this department for a long time, and you’re still alive. I know that you, of all people, won’t hesitate to take any steps necessary to protect her. And I know that you know the reason why, too.”

Cissnei was stunned. Tseng wasn’t given to compliments, especially when there was no need. He was her boss. She had to either obey him or get the hell out, and there was only one way people left the Turks. You rarely got the chance to be bored in their line of work, because things were always different, you met lots of people, and you generally weren’t working long enough for boredom to set in.

“Whatever’s left of Zack isn’t coming back.” Tseng’s voice was like a cudgel – hard, blunt, and it hurt like hell.

Cissnei stared hard at him. It was almost a glare. Almost. “Aerith said he’s still alive.”

She recalled Aerith, so different in the disguise given to her by the whorehouse madam. The woman hated Midgar, but hated Shinra even more. She’d been all too happy to hide the girl if the company wanted her, and to make problems for them. Not knowing the truth about Aerith, just that she was wanted by Shinra, the madam hadn’t realised exactly what she was doing. Cissnei hadn’t set her straight, either. The fewer people knew about the living Ancient, at this point, the better. Apparently there was little love lost between Lady Keshoohin and key members of the Shinra executives – all from the male half, Cissnei had noted. As long as the madam had enough plausible deniability to keep her place running if she was found out, she was gung-ho about causing problems by hiding he sweet little Flower Girl of Sector Five in a boudoir that made bra, panties and a feather boa feel overdressed.

Aerith had barely resembled herself in that strange scanty outfit, but when she spoke to Cissnei there had been no mistaking her voice. Not the timbre so much as the intonation – way too adult for a teenager, even one who’d been through as much as this one had.

_“I’d feel it if he was dead. He isn’t. He’s alive, out there, somewhere.”_

Cissnei trusted her word.

Unfortunately, so did Tseng. “I know she said that.”

“She isn’t a liar.”

“No, she isn’t.”

Cissnei processed that. The fire scorching her insides dimmed, and then died. Her heart sank and a terrible cold started where it hit the bottom of her stomach. There were worse things than death, and many ways to keep a person alive when dying would be preferable. She’d seen the inside of Hojo’s labs here in Midgar before. Some of the ‘specimens’ made even her, with all her memories of the things she’d done, wince and taste bile.

“Oh God …”

“Do you understand why you have to go?”

_No. Yes. This is wrong. This is unfair. Turks look after their own. Zack is a SOLDIER, not one of ours. He’s not even part of a mission – not one that wouldn’t get us all killed, at least. I get that, but … but still, I … this is … Damn it! Why is this so hard?_

Cissnei looked down at her own palms, cut with half-moons where her nails had dug in. She already knew what she’d do next. It hadn’t been preordained, but for someone who wore a suit that’d had more than one set of bloodstains dry-cleaned out, there could be no option but to follow orders. Her body knew it, even if her brain and, yes, her heart were only just catching up.

She shut her eyes. _Hojo you **bastard**. _ Then she held out her hand, palm up. “Give me the brief.”

Tseng didn’t comment on the reddening marks. “There isn’t one.”

“What?”

“Covert ops, Cissnei. Shinra’s not letting their story get out. Neither are we. You’re about to go undercover tracking a lead on AVALANCHE, and won’t be heard from in a long time. Shinra still wants AVALANCHE wiped out. They won’t question the methods, or the timeframe. They’ve got too much else to worry about right now.”


	35. Naifu: Hotshot

“Hey, Youhei?”

Youhei didn’t unfold her arms or open her eyes. “What, brat?”

Naifu pursed her lips. Yeah, she was young, but there was no need for everyone to keep reminding her of it. It wasn’t like she was some stupid teenager, and she bet she had more life experience than any of her teammates thought she did. Of course, since she refused to talk about those experiences, and took pains to act like they’d never happened, the other Turks could be forgiven for not treating her with as much respect as they did each other. She was scatter-brained and clumsy, and it was easy to forget she was also an assassin with a hundred percent success rate.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“Whaddya want, brat?”

“Just came to see if you wanted anything to eat. I’m fixing some food, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not. Piss off.”

Naifu was used to Youhei’s temperament. When she’d entered the rec room to find the new TV was busted, she’d known who the culprit would be. She’d also known not to hold it against Youhei. It had to be tough, being the one nearest the action when Sephiroth went loopy, and being unable to do anything – especially for a perfectionist like Youhei. She was always competing with Kakutou, the only other martial arts expert on the Turk payroll, and drove herself harder than anyone to be the best when she thought she was slipping.

Well, anyone except Rod, but that was a whole other kettle of fish. Rod had a perfectionist complex like _whoa_!

“You sure?” Naifu pressed.

“What part of ‘piss off’ didn’t you understand?”

“The part where you stand in the corridor staring at a wall for nearly an hour and expect me to leave you alone. And the part where you seem to have this really, really big grudge against televisions when you’re in a snip. C’mon. Come eat with me.”

Youhei finally squinted at her. “What are you, some kind of nun being kind to the poor little peons? I ain’t a charity case you need to take care of, brat, and I don’t need you to come sticking your beak into my business. Piss. Off.”

“But –”

“We’re not friends. I don’t even like you. You don’t have to come looking for me. You don’t have to do anything but work with me. If we’re not on duty together, just leave me the hell alone. I don’t need counselling just because you would in my place, and I don’t feel guilty about dobbing in that SOLDIER and his pal so Hojo could make mincemeat out of them –” She stopped, annoyance crossing her face. “Just piss off, brat. Go play with your dollies or something, and leave me the hell lone.” With that she stalked way.

Naifu stuck her tongue out at Youhei’s retreating back.

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s really gonna make people think you’re mature.”

She whirled. “You!” She whirled back again and folded her arms. “I’m not talking to you.”

Legend grinned. “Any particular reason?”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“Yeah, right. Like you’re that impressionable.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if it hadn’t been for your stupid cherry bomb –”

“Which you stole from me.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Whatever you say, kid.”

“Quit calling me that! I have a name!”

He held up his palms, surprised at her vehemence. “Whoa, cool it, hotshot. Dial down the temper.”

Naifu turned her scowl into a pout. “I’m not some little kid,” she said petulantly.

“Then stop sounding like one. Going after Youhei when she wants some time alone? Even you’re not that thick-headed. And ‘I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble’? I really hope you weren’t being serious.” Legend sighed. “This dump could use some lightening up lately.”

Naifu dropped her gaze. She missed Cissnei. They were closest in age among the Turks and, while they weren’t exactly best buds, she could usually count on Cissnei not to chew her out, patronise or talk down to her, mock her, or treat her like a child.

Or maybe what she actually wanted back was the lack of tension from before the Nibelheim Incident. Everything had gone weird since then. Even Tseng, and that was saying something. Most of the Turks were jumpier than a box of hot frogs. Last time she went on patrol with Rod, he’d been tense as a high wire and barely said three words to her the whole time.

_And those three words were ‘Just shut up’._ Naifu sighed. “I’m going to go fix my food now. Which roughly translates as: I’m going to go pour water on my noodles and choke them down because I’m a terrible cook but I haven’t been able to eat Wutaian takeout since you ruined it for me.”

“Is that a request for me to cook you dinner?”

Naifu blinked. “It wasn’t, but if you’re offering …?”

“I don’t cook,” Legend said flatly.

“Figures.” She sighed. “This sucks. This all majorly, majorly sucks. With bells on!”

“I’m with you on that one, ki- hotshot. Won’t hear no disagreement from me.”

Naifu caught the slip, but the fact he had too, and _hadn’t_ called her kid, made her feel slightly better.

Slightly.

_Hey, take your victories where you can_. “You want to share my noodles?”

Legend raised the eyebrow over his good eye. “Now there’s an offer you don’t hear every day. Unless it’s a euphemism.” His leer could have peeled paint.

Naifu tossed her head, whipping strands of dark hair from her face in what she hoped was a windswept and casual kind of way. “You wish. You’re totally not my type.”

“Oh? And what _is_ your type?”

“Not old letches like you.”

Legend looked affronted. He drew himself up tall. “I ain’t old!”

Naifu smirked. Apparently she wasn’t the only one sensitive about her age – something she intended to take advantage of. “Suuure. C’mon, Gramps. I’ll even mash your food up for you so your dentures can handle it.”


	36. Aerith: Evacuee

Aerith held the scissors in her left hand. She was right-handed, but for some reason left worked best when cutting hair. Her mom’s was testament to that once a month, and her knuckles would be white either way.

She wasn’t trembling, which was good, but her insides felt like week-old sandwiches scraped into sweaty socks and then hurled into an oil slick. Near-misses would do that to you when you were already tenser than a high-wire.

“You’re pretty close to my neck there. Think you can quit trembling long enough not to slice me up?” The words were sarcastic but the tone was gentle.

Aerith took a hank of coppery hair in her hand and hesitated. “You’re sure about this?” Her hair was her pride and joy. Even in the filth of the slums she’d taken pains to keep it clean, as if that would separate her from the dead-eyed people who’d already given up all varieties of hope.

“Sure I’m sure. I’m sure squared. Sure _cubed_.”

How could Cissnei joke after … but no, better not to think about that. Aerith hesitated one more time and then made the first cut.

Cissnei was such a wealth of contradictions that sometimes Aerith had no idea what to make of her. Inoffensively placid one moment, a lethal fighter the next, she’d literally seen Cissnei hurl her giant shuriken hard enough to splinter a door off its hinges, and later bumble her way through cooking rice like she’d never had to do anything so simple before. Cissnei gave the impression of a benign nursery assistant, or a helper at a care home. Yet behind her smile lurked knowledge of countless ways to a kill a man using everyday objects, and enough familiarity with espionage to make Aerith question everything she’d ever known about ‘administrative research’.

As far as bodyguards went, she wasn’t anything like Aerith would’ve predicted.

Then again, back in Midgar she’d never expected to need one. True, Shinra wasn’t exactly acting out of the goodness of their hearts each time they came to recapture her, but somehow Tseng had always worked it so she was given a request she could reasonably decline, rather than orders for a capture she couldn’t escape. On the whole, by the time they finally tracked her down to Midgar, then to Sector Five, and realised her biological mother had died, Shinra’s interest in Aerith's DNA had waned. With the success of Sephiroth, they had their own perfect set of genes to keep them occupied and were content to leave her alone. Almost as soon as she was rediscovered, Aerith was relegated to being a back-burner project, and happily so, at least until the Nibelheim Incident, and Sephiroth’s death, and Zack’s disappearance beyond her reach, and how suddenly everything had changed – for all of them.

“Still shaking and getting way too close with those scissors,” Cissnei warned. “Shape up, Aerith. The aim is to cut the hair, not the tips off my ears.”

Aerith nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She raised the scissors in one hand, a comb in the other, and was about to carry on when Cissnei suddenly stopped and twisted to face her. The back of her head was framed by the cracked vanity mirror, streaked in places where the dye was either in too long or washed out too soon. She’d been wearing a hat since her roots started to show – perfectly acceptable here in the north, where _not_ wearing one made you stand out more.

And they couldn’t afford to stand out. Not now, after all these months of successfully staying hidden.

“Focus,” Cissnei said, the playfulness gone from her voice. “Stay focussed.”

“But -”

“Stay. Focussed.”

“But those SOLDIERs -”

“Probably here on an unrelated matter. Shinra wouldn’t send two fully-armed SOLDIERs after one girl, even if they knew your location – which, if Tseng has been doing his job right -” Her eyes challenged Aerith to even entertain the idea he hadn’t. “- they don’t.”

_But they might send SOLDIERs after a veteran Turk._ Bizarre as it was to think of Cissnei as a veteran anything. She was cagey about her life and her past, but Aerith put her age as not too far above her own. That could be wrong, though. Cissnei had one of those faces that looked young except for her eyes. The other sure-fire way to tell a person’s age was by the state of their hands, and Cissnei’s were covered by fingerless leather gloves she rarely, if ever, took off.

Aerith kept her own counsel about all of that, though. She kept her own counsel about a lot of things. Cissnei wasn’t into girly chats and sharing secrets. It might have been because she was a Turk, or it might have been just the way she was. She was _so_ hard to read. Aerith had to just trust that what she told her was true, and that Tseng had also been telling the truth when he said the best thing she could do now was leave Midgar and not look back. He’d only let her say goodbye to her mom because she begged, and Aerith got the feeling that level of compassion was unprecedented for him.

Aerith didn’t know the details, but apparently Tseng’s advice had come just from him, not his superiors, which meant if she was caught it wasn’t just her own neck on the line. Why he was taking such a risk on her behalf, she didn’t know, and Tseng refused to elaborate on the reasons why. Surely he, as an employee of Shinra, was obliged to keep her close by. Yet Shinra wasn’t looking for a missing Turk or a missing ex-specimen. If Cissnei’s grudging bits of information were correct, Shinra thought all their Turks were safely ensconced on missions, didn’t even realise Aerith had left Midgar, and would leave them both in peace as long as this remained true.

Cissnei’s eyes were still trained on her. Cissnei found it easy to maintain her focus, but Aerith was antsy. She couldn’t move again. She _couldn’t_. They hadn’t quite been on the run all these months, but they’d changed location so many times that was as good a label as any. This village had been their longest port, and Aerith was too weary to move again, but too scared to stay put with SOLDIERs around.

Not for the first time, she wished Zack was here. He always made her feel safe – protected, like nothing could ever hurt her again. Even the threat of Shinra had always seemed less when he was around – absurd when you considered he was a SOLDIER and _worked_ for the people who had made her first seven years a living nightmare. Zack was Zack, though, not just Shinra’s puppet. Despite General Sephiroth being much more famous and highly regarded, Aerith thought Zack deserved the most respect of all the First Classes. Zack, at least, had never allowed Shinra to ruin him or his honour, and had held fast to his integrity no matter what the company ordered him to do.

Aerith had very clear memories of that time in the church, when Zack had stayed for hours but said only one thing into her shoulder when she hugged him from behind.

“Angeal,” he had whispered, and she remembered the smell of cordite and other things in his hair, the fresh crisscross cut on his cheek, and the way his body shuddered as the heartache inside him boiled up and out. “Angeal …”

Apart from that he had just sobbed, deeply and regretfully. She’d wrapped her arms around him because she couldn’t think what else to do to ease the loneliness that rolled off him in waves. It had scared her, because until that moment Zack had always seemed unconquerable. Grief, however, had overpowered him where nothing else could. From that day forward she’d seen him in a different light – a gentler, more human light that didn’t just compare him with other SOLDIERs, but with regular people as well.

She could still feel him sometimes – the green sea of the Lifestream was a constant background hum in her mind, but through it glinted a thin silver wire that connected her to each of her loved ones. She could feel her mom back in Midgar, too, and the strength of that bond threw the waning one with Zack into sharp relief. It had been getting harder unless she concentrated. When she and Cissnei were deep in the south she’d barely been able to feel his presence at all. It was easier in the north; although maybe that was more to do with her natural inability to cope with high temperatures, rather than the distance between them. She’d always marvelled when Zack told her about his childhood in Gongaga, and how hot it was there. Stories of cooking eggs on bare rocks, of heat haze causing mirages, and of never daring to go barefoot in case you lost a layer of skin always captured her imagination.

As if reading her thoughts, Cissnei suddenly said, “Tell me about Zack.”

“What?”

“While you’re cutting my hair. Tell me about him. Let that SOLDIER take up your thoughts instead of the sub-par versions outside.”

Outside the wind was blowing a gale and the snow was flying almost horizontal. It was unlikely either Third Class Atogama or Third Class Atosugi was out there, but Aerith understood what Cissnei meant. And maybe it _would_ be nice to talk about Zack. They rarely brought him up, even though Aerith knew he and Cissnei had known each other and worked together several times. Zack had talked about her, though Aerith hadn’t known the Turk tailing her after his disappearance was the infamous Cissnei. She hadn’t realised the woman’s identity until Tseng introduced them, and said Cissnei would be taking her away from Midgar, keeping her safe until it was okay to come back – if it ever could be, according to his personal measures, which nobody else could really follow.

Cissnei turned around, hands cupping her elbows. She did that a lot, as if she was cold. She’d even done it in the south, when the sweat ran down Aerith's back and she’d stupidly asked whether Cissnei was pleased she didn’t have to wear a dark suit in such weather. Cissnei had just stared at her and then turned away, leaving Aerith with the sense she’d been judged and found wanting.

Aerith began to comb up locks of hair and snip them. “He was … always kind,” she said haltingly, summoning Zack in her mind and wondering which bit of his personality to describe first. “Very kind,” she said, “but also strong. He was probably the strongest man I’ve ever known …”

After a while of her talking Cissnei interrupted. “Did he ever regret joining SOLDIER?”

Aerith was puzzled. She’d just been getting into her stride, the words beginning to flow more easily after keeping Zack locked away in her memories for months. “He never said so.”

“But you think he did?”

Aerith bit her lip. “How well did you know him?”

“How well does anyone know anyone in Shinra?” Cissnei replied cryptically.

“Once,” Aerith admitted at last. “I think he regretted it – genuinely wished he’d never joined, I mean – one time.”

“When Angeal died,” Cissnei said with conviction, as if she’d just been waiting for Aerith to say it. Once again Aerith got the feeling of being assessed against some unknown criteria.

“You know about that?”

“It’s a well-documented fact if your business is information pertaining to Shinra.”

Aerith looked at the crown of Cissnei’s head, with its wildly sprouting tufts of auburn and streaky bottle-blonde. “He killed him, didn’t he?”

“He never told you?”

“Zack was … he didn’t like to talk about work things. I think sometimes he came to see me to forget for a while.”

Cissnei snorted. Just a little snort, but Aerith heard it. “That’d be right. And yes, Zack killed Angeal Hewley, the First Class SOLDIER who was his mentor. It was after several incidents that I can’t go into, but basically Shinra had put a shoot-on-sight order on Hewley and Zack was the one who found him. Zack himself provided details of the confrontation, but it seems Hewley attacked him and Zack had to defend himself, which resulted in Hewley’s death.” Her tone snapped back on itself like an elastic band, switching from business-like to almost gentle. “It screwed up Zack’s head for a while. By all accounts he and Hewley had one of the best mentor-pupil relationships in all of Shinra. Zack respected Hewley enormously and already had a disinclination to kill, even in the line of duty.”

“I know,” Aerith nodded, thinking again of that evening in the church, holding tight to him as if he might break apart and the pieces go fluttering away in different directions if she let go. He had eventually recovered from what happened, but after that there had always been something broken inside Zack that not even the strongest healer in the world could fix.

****

Cissnei went on pensively, “He was always so reluctant to take a life. It made a mockery of the SOLDIER programme, to have someone like Zack as one of its premier success stories.”

“He isn’t a killer,” said Aerith. “He has killed, but he isn’t a killer.”

She could see Cissnei’s eyes sliding sideways, trying to focus on the face behind her without turning her head and potentially losing the wrong chunk of hair. “There’s a difference?”

“Of course there is.”

“What is it?”

Aerith considered her reply. “Intent. Enjoyment. Motivation. All three of those, I guess.”

“So if you really mean it, get a kick out of it, or do it for personal gain you’re a cold-blooded murdering bastard?”

“No, but … look, it’s not that simple.”

Cissnei’s expression remained impassive, but she muttered something that sounded like, “Tell me about it.”

“Taking lives is serious. It’s something you carry with you for the rest of your own. That kind of permanence … it’s like scarring yourself. Even if you kill accidentally, or in self-defence, you’re still going to carry the memory of that person and what you did to them. You’re still responsible, and you have to live everyday with the weight of that responsibility. A killer is someone who can carry all that around and … not think about it, I suppose. Not care. Definitely not regret.”

“Except that there’s a flaw in that logic. By your reasoning, people who premeditate or kill for a living are this special ‘killer’ thing. They _have_ to not think about it, or they’d go insane. Trust me on that one.”

“I suppose …” Aerith suddenly realised what she was saying and who she was saying it to. A flush rose into her cheeks. She ran her fingers through a tuft of hair before snipping slowly, a few strands at a time, as if her entire attention was taken up with the task. “But Zack isn’t a killer.”

“How so?”

“Because …” She trailed off.

“Explain it to me, Aerith. He was a SOLDIER. Ergo, he was a killer.”

“He _isn’t_ a killer,” Aerith said emphatically.

Cissnei paused before answering, “All right. Is.”

“You’re wrong.”

“If I am, I’m not seeing it. What makes Zack so different from any guy with a sword who goes around carving up people?”

“Because …” Aerith fumbled, trying to put it into words. How to characterise the way she knew Zack wasn’t just another killer like other Shinra drones? She couldn’t tell Cissnei the more abstruse side of things: how nobody who touched her like Zack, who opened himself so completely and left nothing out, even the things that made him most vulnerable, could be a cold-blooded murderer. She knew instinctively that Cissnei wasn’t the type of person to put a lot of credence in romantic foolishness.

With Zack, Aerith had always felt like she could let go of her inhibitions and he wouldn’t judge her. He peeled away the surface layers of people to get at the heart underneath. He made you feel like he’d created a special place inside, just for you, where you’d always be safe because he’d never let go of the piece of yourself that you gave him to look after and put there.

“He carries it all inside him, every day,” Aerith said, still in the same insistent tone. “All of them, each person he ever had to … while he was in Midgar, at least, the times I could see him … he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn’t just living for himself. He found the fun in everything; never let anything get him down, because he knew his life wasn’t just for him anymore. He had to smile. He had to be positive, no matter how much it hurt, or how much he lost. He had to go on living for each life he’d taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would’ve been a … a betrayal.”

“A betrayal?” Cissnei echoed.

“Of their deaths. Of everything he’d forced them to give up. All their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …” Aerith stopped. Her breath caught. “His life _is_ their legacy. Their _living_ legacy,” she added, pouring as much certainty into the word as she could. Zack was alive. No matter how thin or hard to find that silver thread may become, she couldn’t ever let herself believe any different. “They live through him. That’s the difference between someone like Zack and a killer. Friend, enemy, bystander – it doesn’t matter which side they’re on, just that he makes sure they go on living by bothering to remember them. He owes it to them to make sure they aren’t forgotten.”

Cissnei said nothing. Neither of them did for a long time. Aerith went on, trimming here, snipping there, combing through her work meticulously even though it was awkward for her to reach and her arms were beginning to ache. By the time she stepped back and sat gratefully down on the bed, enough time had passed that she felt comfortable speaking again.

Cissnei, however, cut her off before she could say a word. “Turks and SOLDIERs have never really gotten along,” she said simply. “In-house rivalry, plus a bad mix of personalities. Zack, though … he got on with everyone. It didn’t matter whether they were SOLDIER, infantryman, Turk, management, or just a valet or caterer at one of those bigwig parties President Shinra always threw. Throws. Whatever. Zack was friendly with everyone, and because of the way he was with them, everybody was always friendly back, like they couldn’t help it. He just had that way about him.”

Aerith nodded.

“You felt like … you could trust him not just with your life.” Cissnei frowned. “Turks trust each other with their lives all the time. SOLDIERs too. But you felt like you could trust Zack with more than that.”

“Like what?”

Her frown deepened. With her new short haircut, she looked a lot older. The pinched look to her face added years, and the frown made them difficult ones. “Like your secrets,” she said at length, grudgingly, almost bitterly, as if she wanted to know how he dared to be so presumptuous.

It was the most candid she had ever been with Aerith in all the months they’d spent together. Cissnei knew Aerith's biggest secret about Zack, and now Aerith knew hers too.

Because in a blinding flash of inspiration, Aerith understood: Cissnei was in love with him, too, even with all the baggage and problems that now brought. Suddenly a lot of things made sense – about Cissnei, about Zack, and about this expedition they were now on. Things slotted into place in Aerith's head, including the knowledge that for all the major differences in their personalities, Cissnei was actually just like Zack. Aerith had seen her stiffen when she described how Zack carried the memories of others inside him and kept them from dying completely. Cissnei did the same. Maybe she had never realised before what that meant about her nature as a self-defined ‘killer’, but Aerith could tell she’d been doing it for a long time; extending the lives of her victims by prolonging the memories of them in the world.

“Zack made you feel like you could be more than you think you are,” Aerith said softly. “Like maybe … it’s all right to want more. To think you deserve it when everything else has made you think you should just shut up and be grateful for what you already have.”

Cissnei said nothing. She said it very loudly, though.

The first tear rolled down Aerith's cheek and dripped off her jaw. The second headed for the crease of her nose, so when she sniffed it went up her nostril and made her cough. Cissnei turned around, a confused and then panicked look in her eyes as she was drawn out of the thoughts occupying her mind.

“Shinra killed my father,” Aerith said thickly. “My mother too, in a roundabout way. I never knew him. He died when I was only a few days old. But my mother … I remember her and … they took her from me, piece by piece, when I was just a kid. I was still … still a child, and they … to me and … since I was a baby, but to her they were worse … she tried to … to protect me while we were in the labs, but … and then all of a sudden she broke us out, and ran, and she made sure I’d be okay, but then she died and … and I’ve never said it, not to anyone, but I miss her. Gaia, I miss her so much sometimes it hurts. I’ve been without her longer than I was with her, and I love my mom, but my mother – my real mother – she … I still … I was only seven. Nobody expects you to remember pain from when you were seven. And the whole Ancient thing … the thing that got her killed … makes me different. I’m not supposed to have human frailties. Having Cetra genes means … but I hate it. I hate that I was born this way. I hate that my choices have always been to hide or be in pain at someone else’s hands. I hate eking out an existence and never feeling like I’m allowed to reach for more, or to try and make my mom’s life easier, because who and what I am means keeping a low profile …

“But Zack, he was different. Even though he was SOLDIER, I never felt like I was risking everything I’d built … everything I’d clawed back that Shinra took from me … I never felt like I was risking that when I was with him. A SOLDIER could have destroyed it all for me, but not Zack. He’d never … But now he’s gone, and we’ve been running all this time without even _talking_ about him, even though it’s obvious … but I can’t anymore. I need to … I can’t …” She sucked in a breath. “I’ve never been so scared of anything in all my life.” She raised reddened eyes to Cissnei and whispered, “Not just the obvious. Not just the future. The present, right now, for him.”

“What are you saying?” Cissnei asked hoarsely.

“I’ve felt things. In my dreams. He’s in pain, and I can’t help him. I can’t _do_ anything. Like my mother couldn’t do anything for me when they separated us and the researchers … If this is how she felt, I can understand why she threw everything away for herself just to make sure I had a chance. Because if I could take away Zack’s pain right now, I’d do it. I’d do it in a second, no matter what it meant for me. And that terrifies me, because I’m not meant to be thinking of myself and how I feel anymore, I’m meant to be thinking of … I have to … but that man … that _man_ …”

“Zack?”

Aerith shook her head. It was all coming out now; clogging in the exits, surfacing piece by painful, hidden piece. “I know … I _know_ the man who took my father and mother away is involved somehow, and that terrifies me more than any of -” She gestured around, at the inside of the chalet they’d rented, at the threadbare furniture, at Cissnei and herself and the differences between them. “- this.”

Cissnei stared at her. Things shifted behind her eyes, but her expression remained blank, as if her facial muscles had short-circuited and shut down while they waited for new instructions about what they were supposed to display. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” she said eventually.

It wasn’t remotely what Aerith wanted to hear.

She’d never been so heartbreakingly lonely in her life.

She put her face in her hands and wept, while Cissnei looked on and twitched her fingers like her body wanted to move, but the rest of her had no idea of the appropriate response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ObNit: This chapter was actually the very first thing I originally wrote for this whole fic.


	37. Zack: Captive

Nothingness swirled like blankets of dark. Black upon black; shadow in shadow; murky depths plummeting down and up and out and in and everything in between. Brief pockets of light were exactly that: brief and painful and no … no … no …

Something hit from time to time. Numbness gave way to things. Emotions? What were they? Swirls of something sparkly and different. A variety of swirling that wrapped and caressed but ultimately left. Only the darkness was eternal. Emotions cut in from elsewhere, calling in thin whispery voices for him to swim to the surface, but the depths always pulled him back in the end.

_No …_

Who was that? Himself? Someone else?

_Have to … got to … get out. Have to … save …_

Threads of thoughts from before the darkness clung like spider webs. He reached, but his grasp came back clotted and unsatisfied. He was supposed to be doing something. The thought grew, cajoled by the whisperings. He was supposed to be … not in the darkness. Out in the bright, shining, painful light, where things hurt and he hurt and everyone else hurt and screamed and burned and bled and died and no … no … no …

_… he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn’t just living for himself …_

What?

_… never let anything get him down … knew his life wasn’t just for him anymore …_

Who?

_… had to go on living for each life he’d taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would’ve been a … a betrayal …_

Familiar. So familiar. Reaching … reaching …

_… all their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …_

Fading. Come back! Come back, _please_! The darkness grappled, tugging, pulling, sucking back into its own depths like a cannibalistic whirlpool. He sagged into its embrace.

_… his life is their legacy …_

Come back. Please … come … back …

_… Their **living** legacy…_

The words followed him, wedging in him like a single speck of light as a swirl of numbing nothingness closed over him once more.


	38. Naifu: Sewer Rat

Naifu crept along in the dark, straining her ears and eyes for anything she could work with. It wasn’t pitch dark, but most of the lights had blown in this section of sewer, and nobody from Shinra had seen fit to replace them. The steady drip-drip-drip of unknown liquids echoed along the tunnel, together with the swish-slurp-pop of footsteps. They’d gone about half an hour when she heard a sound that made all the hairs on the back of her neck rise: the chitter of tiny rodent voices and the scritch of not-so-tiny rodent claws.

“Please tell me that’s mice. Or a new breed of mutant underground squirrels.”

“It’s mice,” Wabi deadpanned. “Or a new breed of mutant underground squirrels.”

“Liar.”

“Keep moving.”

“I know, I know.” After a minute she added, “Slave driver.”

“You’d rather stay down here longer?”

“No, I’d rather be home in bed with a hot water bottle. Instead I’m down among the doo-doos looking for a runaway stool pigeon. Not the way I’d planned to spend my Friday night. And –” She froze.

Wabi came up short behind her. His glasses glinted in the dim illumination of the single unbroken light ahead, and his dark hair hung lank against his collar in the horrible damp. Naifu knew his katana was attached to his waist, and that anything rodenty would be no match against his swordsmanship and her throwing knives, but still …

“Something just brushed my foot. Something furry.”

“Don’t worry,” Wabi replied. “It was dead.”

She shuddered. “How the hell did I end up with this assignment? Did I tick Tseng off again? I was being really careful after the last time.”

“That was when you accidentally blew up that chopper, wasn’t it?”

“Technically I wasn’t the one who set fire to the fuel tank, but I might’ve … facilitated the blowing up by puncturing it first. By accident and unintentionally, honest. I was aiming at the pilot, but he could cast spells and defected my needles with a shield.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

She sighed. Her last couple of missions had been duds, which might explain why she’d ended up on clean-up detail, tracking a snitch who’d decided to snitch Shinra’s own secrets to the wrong people and then made a run for it. Yeah, like that would help him. He’d gone to ground, literally, and Naifu had been left trying not to look too disgusted when Tseng sent her down into the sewers beneath Midgar after him.

Which didn’t explain what Wabi was doing down here with her. He was a straight arrow, never raising his head above the parapet or pissing people off just for the hell of it, like Youhei or Legend. Neither was he noticeably outstanding, the way Helena or Tseng seemed born for their jobs. He wasn’t even quirky, like Reno or Richie, or even Naifu herself. Wabi wasn’t good at joking, or a witty conversationalist, or a grump. He wasn’t especially unfriendly or sociable. What he _was_ good at was flying under the radar while still managing to be competent enough that nobody even considered him unable to handle a mission.

“So what did you do to land this assignment?” she called over her shoulder. “Shish-kebab something you shouldn’t?”

“You should concentrate on the matter at hand.”

“I’m pretty much hoping the _matter_ down here stays _away_ from my hands.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Naifu started to say, but as she turned to glance at Wabi, she saw him incline his head. Following his gaze, she muttered, “Oh damn.”

“Something of an understatement,” Wabi said as they inspected the body slumped against the side of the tunnel.

It was their snitch. A hypodermic hung from his exposed left arm. The fingers of his right hand were curled over it, as if they last thing they’d ever done was push down on the plunger and reflexively form a fist of pleasure.

“Lucid,” Wabi declared after a cursory inspection.

Naifu involuntarily drew her hand back.

“It can’t affect you just through skin contact.”

“I _know_ ,” she said, embarrassed. As if to prove to him she wasn’t totally useless, she pressed her fingers against the side of the guy’s neck. “He’s gone. And he’s cold, so he might’ve been dead for a while, but that could just be the temperature of the water down here.” She looked down. “And I use the word ‘water’ in the loosest sense.”

“This smells wrong.”

“You’re telling me.”

“No.” Wabi motioned to the needle. “He’s not a Lucid addict. No track marks.”

The drug had been taking the streets of Midgar by storm for some time, as slum-dwellers sought even a fleeting reprieve from their lives. There were incidents of it turning up above the Plate too, but mostly it circulated the slums. The Turks had discovered several bad consignments recently, cut with other things that made the purer stuff, while still ridiculously addictive and dangerous, seem like talcum powder mixed with water. Shinra wasn’t stupid enough to think they could completely stop Lucid’s distribution, but they drew the line at letting ‘the rough stuff’ enter their world in such a way as could also affect their upper world.

Naifu looked at the dead man. “His last information hand-over was drug-related, wasn’t it? Maybe the people he was working for got hold of him first.”

“Possibly.” Wabi was grim – or as grim as he ever got. Maybe his face really would rupture if he formed a proper expression. “We have to clean this up on all levels.”

Naifu nodded and wrinkled her nose. Prolonged exposure didn’t make the stench of raw human waste any less unpleasant. “You took the words right out of my mouth. I am _so_ gonna barf if we stay down here much longer.”

* * *

** Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs **

* * *

Wabi is a side-fling to the Japanese concept of ‘Wabi-Sabi’. Check it out at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi>.


	39. Legend: Opportunist

Legend smelled them coming before he saw them. “What the hell happened to _you_?”

“Don’t ask,” Naifu deadpanned.

“You smell like shit.” He blinked. “You’re _covered_ in shit.”

“I said not to ask.”

Wabi’s expression gave nothing away either. “Sewer chase,” he said simply. It was enough.

Legend grimaced. “I hate those. Any joy at the end?”

“The target was already deceased.”

“Damn.” Hauling a live person out of the sewers was bad enough, but dragging a dead body was all sorts of awful. If it was bloated it went right into ‘I should’ve shot myself before I got up this morning’. Regrettably, Legend knew exactly what he was talking about on that score. At least it hadn’t been a Wutaian swamp. Now _that_ was some pretty nasty shit – no pun intended.

Actually … yeah, pun intended. Naifu and Wabi reeked like week-old cat puke. Her expression stank as well. She eyed Legend with the kind of stubborn defiance that instantly made him want to find what irritated her most and do it relentlessly. Unlike many of his colleagues, he could be sure of a reaction from her, and one that wasn’t likely to get him thrown in the slammer, the hospital, or under house arrest again. She probably only looked that w because of her hang-up bout being taken seriously, and not being treated less than anyone else just because of her age. Truthfully, she wasn’t as young as people seemed to think, but sometimes still acted like a kid, as if she was afraid to let go and finally enter the big, bad adult world.

There was something supremely wrong with the universe when he could think that bout someone with her very own kill ratio. She’d brought down more targets than anyone who’d seen her drawing on her chopsticks, turning them into puppets and badly ventriloquising conversations between them during mealtimes, could envisage.

She glared at Legend, challenging him to say anything.

“Lemon juice,” he said, surprising her.

“Huh?”

“Gets rid of the smell better than soap.”

“You’re giving me cleaning tips?”

“I ain’t gonna tell you the best way to buff your nails or braid your hair for you, Sureshot.”

“He’s right,” Wabi interrupted. “We need to make our report.”

“Use the juice first. Tsengy-boy like his office to stink of coffee and stress, not sewer gunge.”

Naifu gave Legend a confused look before departing. Her face also registered a little disappointment, s if she’d been looking forward to arguing, or at least trading a few insults with him. They did that a lot – had done ever since the cherry bomb thing, as if that had given the permission to act out round each other even though they rarely worked together. In fact, Legend thought s he watched her go, he didn’t think he’d ever been put on assignment with her, which was a crying shame, now he came to think bout it.

Legend liked women. He’d never made need secret of the fact. He liked the way they looked, the way they smelled, the way they sounded, and the way they felt. He wasn’t, however, an idiot. Starting stuff with colleagues was a Bad Idea unless they were on board at the beginning with the idea that whatever happened was just physical.

Even so, he’d found during the war that even _that_ didn’t ensure anything straightforward and uncomplicated. The civilian women he went with all eventually wanted more than he was willing to give. He told them t the start not to expect him to be their boyfriend, or any crap like that, and they always greed – until they saw his house, or realised that with a ring on their finger the small fortune he’d amassed working for Shinra would come to them if he was killed. The hungry gleam in their eyes depressed the hell out of him, to the point where he wondered why he was even surprised to see it anymore.

Contrastingly, the few times he’d been with colleagues they’d understood there was no point investing in a relationship where one of them could be dead in an hour. When that happened, it had been Legend who found himself doing the very no-nos he’d always hated in those civilian women. He’d acted like he had some sort of claim on those who hadn’t asked for more than a few fumbles to reaffirm they were still alive in enemy Wutaian territory. As soon as he spotted that in himself, he pulled back, and once even asked for a transfer to a different mission before he went off the deep end.

Despite his reputation, he hadn’t actually started anything with any women since returning to active service. Bizarre as it was, the fabled womaniser had become bored. His tenure under house arrest in the Cost del Sol had left him ample time to wine and dine dozens of women, and the unthinkable had happened – he’d grown bored of it. Being a Turk again had been just what he needed to stop himself going stir crazy.

And now?

Legend contemplatively watched Naifu turn the corner of the corridor. He’d never, actually, sworn off women, had he? And Naifu had enough gumption that she’d be unlike any of his previous conquests – civilian or not. There were possibilities there.

“Definite possibilities,” he muttered with a smile.


End file.
